China National Radio (CNR), the national broadcasting station of the People's Republic of China, was founded on December 12, 1940 in Yan'an, a revolutionary base of the Chinese Communist Party in Shaanxi Province. Formerly known as the Yan'an Xinhua Broadcasting Station, the radio station got its current name on December 5, 1949. It expanded into six channels in 1984, offering 96 broadcast hours per day and 107 hours from 1990.

CNR now operates eight channels, broadcasting 156 hours of programs in total every day. The first channel, covering all parts of China, mainly provides news in Mandarin. Its second channel focuses on economy and science. The third concentrates on stereo entertainment programs. The fourth targets listeners in Beijing and the fifth and sixth target listeners in Taiwan Province. The seventh channel targets listeners in the Pearl River Delta and also its signals cover the Hong Kong and Macao SARs. The eighth channel targets listeners of minority nationalities in frontier regions.

The first, second and third channels broadcast in Mandarin; the fourth and eighth in Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Korean, Uygur language and Kazak language; the fifth and sixth in the Southern Min Dialect; and the seventh in Cantonese.

To date, CNR has set up 39 reporter stations across China and established business cooperation with broadcasting stations in more than 40 countries and regions.

CNR boasts more than 650 million regular listeners in the world, and it has become the biggest national broadcasting station in terms of the number of listeners.