Sixth Tone is owned by the communist party… Honestly curious about specific issues you might have with them. They’re ‘liberal’ on issues like gender and sexuality, which in my opinion is good in a pretty conservative Chinese social landscape.

you're misreading them completely. you're assuming the things they're silent about are where they agree with the party but it's pretty much the exact opposite. they quietly seethe about the stuff they're not allowed to touch. the gender stuff just happens to be where their leash is longest

look up the twitter page of their former editor in chief and tell me how it's any different from any western thinktank reptile, look who the writers follow and commiserate with on twitter, look up any article and how it's laced with the same snide passive aggression and deliberate misuse of scare quotes, look for any article even vaguely resembling the tone/content of the very spot-on Mango press article someone else linked to above

They’ll also often draw attention to labor and economic issues from a left perspective.

western mainstream media does all sorts of coverage pretending to care about about overworked migrant workers & sweatshops. the subtext is chinanotrealsocialism, nothing more. it's not that it shouldn't be covered, it's about it being in obvious bad faith

They’re critical of the government sometimes, but that’s just a sign of the diversity of opinion within the Party. They’re not perfect but imo they’re the best that Chinese state media has to offer on society and culture if you actually want some nuance in your reporting.

they hate the cpc and its leadership, but theyre bourgeois libs so theyre not willing to become total pariahs over it. this isn't a 'letting pefect be the enemy of good' thing, they only seem nuanced and balanced because of how psychotic western media is