The general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee
and the State Council recently released a guideline to further beef up
media convergence. All media platforms were urged to better understand the importance
and need for media convergence and for reform and innovation to advance
the integration of traditional media-such as printed media, television
and radio-and emerging media-such as the internet and portable
technologies-into more perse forms of information products. The task involves identifying the policies, management, talents and
technologies needed to build a group of "new mainstream media with
strong influence and competitiveness" as soon as possible. This is not the first time that the central authorities have stressed the importance of media convergence. In January 2019, after visiting People's Daily in Beijing and
learning about the development of social media and other new media
products at China's largest newspaper group, President Xi Jinping said
boosting integrated media development had become an "urgent topic". The new guideline emphasizes "internet thinking" and calls for
pooling more high-quality content, advanced technologies, talents and
funds with internet and mobile terminals to strengthen the online
network. The connection between the media and the audience should be
strengthened by applying more new technologies and adhering to the
people-centered principle, the guideline said, and that the platforms
had to be more engaged with their users and produce content they like. Highlighting integrated development driven by advanced technology, it
stressed the need to better use 5G, big data, cloud computing, the
internet of things, blockchain and artificial intelligence to strengthen
research on news communication. Mainstream media were called on to become more aware of market
competition and to continue reforms in organizational structure and
editing process to form an intensive and efficient content production
system. Media organizations at the State, province, city and county level
should enhance international communication capabilities to better tell
Chinese stories and spread Chinese culture to the world, the document
said. In addition, the guideline called for a more active, open and
effective media recruitment policy and putting more young and
middle-aged professionals who are adept at new media into key positions.
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