The China-Pakistan Information Corridor, or CPIC, has been promoted as a barrier against fake news. However, what it really does is give two governments with some of the world’s worst press freedom records a shared tool to decide what their citizens can read, what they can see, and how they should think.

CPIC was launched at the Pakistan-China Friendship Center in Islamabad on October 27, at an event organized by Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting with China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning and Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong in attendance. During the event, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar thanked the Chinese embassy for supporting the project.

CPIC brings media organizations and think tanks together to share news, produce content, and respond to reporting the two governments consider misleading. Officials have described it as the “voice” of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multibillion-dollar program of Chinese investment and financing in Pakistan. Establishing cooperation in this arena was  first raised by Tarar in March 2024, who asked for joint action against what he called fake news about CPEC. Back in 2021, a China-Pakistan Media Forum had already pledged a China-Pakistan Media Corridor and set up a network. The U.S. State Department, in a report, characterized this turn of events as China negotiating significant control over Pakistani media by establishing a jointly operated “nerve center” to monitor and shape Pakistan’s information environment.

Under the CPIC plan, 18 Pakistani and Chinese media outlets will share news and content. These include Pakistan’s state broadcasters and some private channels, alongside China’s Xinhua, China Media Group, and People’s Daily. A separate “fact-checking” unit will track and respond to stories that officials consider misleading. The Pakistan-China Institute will lead joint research and publications by think tanks, which Tarar said will help in “shaping narratives.” 

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, as Pakistan and China face “misinformation, fake news, and lies,” this will build a more favorable public-opinion environment and help counter propaganda against both countries, as China’s ambassador to Pakistan put it. 

But CPIC arrives in a country where the words “fake news” can already put a reporter in prison.

In January 2025, the Pakistani government amended the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA). Section 26-A introduced penalties of up to three years in prison, a 2 million Pakistani rupee fine, or both, for deliberately spreading information known or reasonably believed to be false and likely to cause public fear, panic, or unrest. The amendments also gave a government-controlled regulator broad powers to block online content, including material considered against “the ideology of Pakistan.” 

These powers have been subsequently turned against independent reporting. Within nine months of the amendments, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had recorded at least nine journalists prosecuted under PECA. Raftar founder Farhan Mallick was among those arrested in March 2025 for PECA breaches. Pakistan’s National Cyber Crimes Investigation Agency (NCCIA) issued Dawn journalist Muhammad Akbar Notezai a notice over his 2024 investigation into corruption in Balochistan, the province where CPEC’s Gwadar port is located. Reporting on corruption had become grounds for pursuing the reporter.

By April 2026, the government had reported 187 cases registered under Section 26-A of PECA. Separately, Freedom Network documented 129 violations against journalists between April 2025 and March 2026, including 58 legal cases, most involving PECA. It identified the amended law as the most consequential instrument being used to restrict journalism and free expression. Its executive director, Iqbal Khattak, said the law had created a climate of fear in which journalists were censoring themselves to avoid prosecution. 

This is the environment into which CPIC’s official “fact-checking” unit is being introduced.

RSF’s 2026 Press Freedom index placed Pakistan 153rd of 180 and said the authorities work to control, and sometimes suppress, what journalists publish. When the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists asked the Islamabad High Court to suspend the PECA amendment, the court said in February 2026 that it could not do so by injunction.

Questioning CPEC was taboo in Pakistan long before CPIC. Foreign Policy reported in 2022 that criticizing CPEC was being treated like criticizing the army, with the military’s media wing warning journalists over WhatsApp when they cross the red line. A 2020 Brookings paper, “At All Costs”, described how both the Pakistani and Chinese governments guard the CPEC story.

Now add CPIC. A government that jails people for “fake news” has built an official unit, with a foreign state’s media inside it, to decide which stories about their flagship project are misleading. That unit gives the fake news law a target list. A reporter asking about CPEC debt, unpaid power dues, Gwadar protests, or attacks on Chinese workers can first be labeled misleading by the state, then charged under Section 26-A. In an environment like that, many reporters will not take the risk; instead they will stop asking such questions and reporting on these issues. 

Now on the Chinese side, RSF’s 2026 index ranked China 178th of 180, above only North Korea and Eritrea. RSF called China the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with 121 media workers behind bars. Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, first jailed for reporting from Wuhan during COVID-19, was sentenced again in September 2025 to four more years. China Media Group, a CPIC member, runs CGTN and China Radio International, the regime’s main voices abroad. Under CPIC, Xinhua, CMG, and People’s Daily help decide what counts as verified news in Pakistan.

This is a known playbook by China. Freedom House studied Beijing’s media influence in 30 countries in 2022. Officials in 19 of them had stepped up their own attacks on free expression since 2019, and officials in 12 had acted specifically to suppress coverage Beijing disliked. Freedom House’s first advice to newsrooms in those countries was to end content-sharing deals with Chinese state media. CPIC does the exact opposite and makes those deals official.

The central question is who gets to decide which narrative is misleading? Under CPIC, that judgment sits with the governments whose actions journalists are supposed to investigate. A report about debt, corruption, or abuse can damage CPEC’s image precisely because it is true. Yet the same officials defending that image can disguise their response as fact-checking. Once the governments’ version becomes the standard, a journalist must defend the right to report before anyone examines the evidence. This has always been how governments make people distrust journalists who question them; in a situation like that, the powerful become the judges of truth, while those who question them are treated as the problem.

Fact-checking is good in principle, necessary even. The issue is that governments cannot be reasonably expected to fact-check stories about themselves in an unbiased fashion; it’s a conflict of interest. Governments have reputations, policies, and political interests to protect and promote. When the institution being subjected to media scrutiny also decides whether the investigation is misleading, it is deciding its own case. 

An honest fact-check should follow the evidence, even if it makes a government look bad. But CPIC is meant to protect the partnership’s image. That puts a journalist investigating wrongdoing up against the governments trying to defend themselves. If publishing a story could mean losing their job or getting arrested, a reporter may decide it is not worth the risk. The story goes unpublished, people never hear what the reporter found, and those responsible never have to explain themselves.