Renminbao [人民报] is an independent Chinese online news website that criticizes the Chinese regime.
They are not that different from other Leninist inspired governments. Cuba does that. Vietnam does that. The Soviet Union certainly did that.
These governments always lose their minds with the idea of people organizing themselves and the controlling party having no control whatsoever about these groups.
I have no idea how the People's Daily plays into that. Maybe the readership is so small and it attracts a certain type of personality that Zhongnanhai thinks it is a good idea to report on them.
I've read that the major clique in the CCP certainly wasn't happy about students calling themselves Maoists and supporting workers striking.
I don't know much about China to say about that nor if the People's Daily has many people reading it.