Commencing with the distinctive institutional environment of China, this study broadens the perspective of cross-border journalism from the transnational/international dimension to the institutional dimension. Drawing upon embeddedness theory, the research delves into the forms, scope, and characteristics of cross-border cooperative relationships established by private news organizations as a means for grappling with dual legitimacy dilemmas to embed themselves in the journalistic field. Qualitative interviews with 24 Chinese unlicensed journalists in private news organizations reveal a preference for their cross-border collaboration with government and state-owned media, possessing political or cultural authority, while deliberately avoiding engagement with foreign media, self-media and users. This pattern of cross-border cooperation exhibits a distinctive trait of dependency embeddedness. Furthermore, it is observed that these practices primarily serve as self-protection measures with limited impact on publicity and the democratic development of journalism. These findings contribute to our comprehension of the self-protection strategies employed by China’s private news organizations and their unlicensed journalists in the digital media era, offering a novel institutional perspective in understanding cross-border journalism practices within a non-Western context.