International Exchanges and Cooperation

·Close Bilateral Media Exchanges

The SAPPRFT has excelled in leading the work of the “Sino-Russian Media Exchanges Year” Secretariat, having organized and carried out various activities and helped the relevant member units of the Chinese Organizing Committee to successfully launch the “Sino-Russian Border Joint Interview,” “The Silk Road Sino-Russian Joint Interview,” the “Competition of the Most Influential Sino- Russian Literary Works,” the “Sino-Russian Internet Media Forum,” the “Sino-Russian Journalism Education College Alliance,” the “Sino-Russian Children’s Media Camp” and other key projects.

Leaders of the People’s Daily were invited to visit Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Mexico, Belgium, Switzerland, France and other countries. They signed relevant agreements and cooperation memorandums with local major media, and carried out multi-level exchanges and cooperation. They attended the “Sino- Russian Media Forum” in Russia, strengthening exchanges and cooperation with ITAR-TASS, Rossiya Segodnya, Ros- siyskaya Gazeta and other mainstream media. They received heads of various internationally renowned media and held discussions with them over quite a number of topics, such as deepening cooperation and sharing experience of inte- grated media development. In June 2016, People’s Daily and ITAR-TASS jointly held the “Sino-Russian Border Port City Tour – 2016 Sino-Russian Mainstream Media Joint Interview Activity.” President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony and the joint exhibition of interview pictures.

In January 2016, as witnessed by President Xi Jinping and Egyptian President Sisi, Xinhua News Agency signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Journalism with the Egyptian News Administration. This marked the first time in history that Xinhua News Agency signs a cooperation agreement, witnessed by respective heads of state, with foreign media outside China. In June 2016, in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cai Mingzhao, head of Xinhua News Agency, co-signed with the head of Russia’s TASS News Agency an agreement on news cooperation between the two parties. Also in 2016, Xinhua signed co- operation agreements with many other media and similar institutions, such as Qatar’s Al Jazeera Media Network, Greece’s Athens News Agency, Italy’s Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata, Chile’s La Tercera, Cuba’s Latin Ameri- can News Agency and Australia’s University of Technology Sydney.

Since 2016, CCTV has hosted a total of 46 groups of foreign senior government leaders and world main media high level missions, including the prime minister of New Zealand, vice minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, senior vice president of the Associated Press, and chairman of the British Silver- gate Media Company. In 2016, more than 10 cooperation agreements were signed with foreign TV stations, including the Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation Between CCTV and C1R, witnessed by President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin; the Cooperation Agreement Between CCTV and Peru TV, witnessed by President Xi Jinping and President Kuczynski; the Memo- randum of Understanding Between CCTV and ERT, witnessed by Premier Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Tsipras; and the See How the Silk Road Changes the World Co- production Memorandum of Understanding, the Animal Friends II Co-production Memorandum of Understanding, and the Panda and Kiwi Bird animated series Co-production Memorandum of Understanding signed with NHNZ and witnessed by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key.

In 2016, the All-China Journalists Association received visits to China and interviews by 301 media people in 38 news delegations from 31 countries, including the US, the UK, and Russia, and organized the visits of 121 media people in 21 Chinese news delegations to 30 countries, including the US and Japan. As part of the “Belt and Road” Initiative, the All-China Journalists Association organized and sent Chinese media delegations on visits to Ukraine, Poland, Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and other countries. It organized the 15th joint interview activity – “Trip to Heilongjiang by Journalists from Both Sides of the Taiwan Straits,” and invited a total of 36 journalists from 27 main- stream media from both sides of the Taiwan Straits and Hong Kong to carry out interviews in Heilongjiang to gain insight into construction of the “Silk Road in Heilongjiang.” Centering on the strategy of integrated media development, the All-China Journalists Association organized and sent Chinese media delegations to the US, where they conducted interviews at 10 media institutions to learn their approaches and experiences of integrated media development, and organized visits to Austria and Germany to learn their anti- piracy efforts in the field of journalism. The Association invited Jeffrey Cole, Professor of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and Director of the Digital Future Center of Southern California, to visit China, and Perry Biemann, a US senior environmental journalist, to come to China and hold a forum with Chinese journalists on “how to use multimedia for environmental reporting.” Journalists who had won the Australian Walkley Awards were invited to attend forums in China, discussing with teachers and students at journalism colleges as well as media workers on how to excel under the new media environment in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities. With regard to journalistic ethics, the All-China Journalists Association invited the directors of the British Ethical Journalism Network and other organizations to visit China and exchange experience with heads of the related provincial and municipal journalistic ethics committees, journalists and college teachers and students, and to hold the Sino-British Forum on Journalistic Ethics, in order to carry out in-depth exchanges on the journalistic ethics supervision mechanism and other issues of common interest in the media circle.