China’s top propaganda official yesterday urged the state-run Xinhua news agency to better serve the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and become a “world-class” multimedia organization as it turned 80.
In a speech at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to mark the anniversary, Li Changchun (李長春) — No. 5 in the party hierarchy — urged Xinhua to play a stronger role in publicizing government decisions.
The government wants to use Xinhua to project its voice globally as part of a major “soft power” push and the news agency is due to expand its bureaus around the world from the current 162 to about 200 by 2020.
He pointed to a resolution made last month at a party plenum to expand government reach into cultural affairs — widely seen as an effort to curb the expanding influence of the Internet, including the hugely popular Twitter-like microblogs.
“We hope Xinhua will serve the plenum ... improve its capacity in guiding public opinion” and “do more to safeguard social stability,” Li said in his speech to scores of diplomats and foreign media representatives.
“Xinhua has an important responsibility in spreading the resolution,” Li said. “It is a top priority.”
“Xinhua must speed up its integration with modern technologies and multimedia technologies to become a world class media organization,” he added, urging the agency to offer “more vivid” reporting.
In recent years, the agency — flush with government funding — has sought to expand its footprint overseas and has set up an expansive Web site.
The agency currently employs 11,000 people, including 5,000 journalists, and produces news in eight languages including Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese.
In July last year, Xinhua set up CNC World, a 24-hour television news station modeled on the US’ CNN and Britain’s BBC, which aims to cover the news in about 100 countries.
Li Congjun (李從軍), head of -Xinhua and a member of the party’s powerful Central Committee, said at the time of the launch that CNC “will offer an alternative source of information for the global audience and aims to promote peace and development.”
Yesterday, he repeatedly stressed the loyalty of the agency to the party and its succession of leaders, including Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
“We must fight for socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “foster a Marxist news concept,” he said.
Xinhua was founded by the CCP on Nov. 7, 1931, as the sole mouthpiece of the party, which was struggling to survive in the midst of civil war and political purges.
Now, though, with more than 500,000 Internet users in China and more than 200 million users of microblogging sites, authorities have sought to master new technologies to beef up their controls over traditional media outlets.
In an example of these efforts, nearly 40 companies, including e-commerce giant Alibaba, online portal Sina and search engine Baidu, attended a three-day seminar hosted by the State Internet Information Office, an online watchdog.
At the end of the government workshop on Saturday, the heads of these firms vowed to stop the “spread of harmful information” on the Web.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS