The second CGTN Global Media Summit and eighth  Video Forum will be held in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality from October 16 to 17.

Taking forward the last year's theme "A Shared Future", this year, the summit will be conducted under the theme of "Opening and Connecting the World".

Looking back at the last year's event, CGTN controller Jiang Heping's interpretation of the future of the media industry is worth recalling.

"The future of the media industry has always been a subject of debate in China. Some argue that content is the king, others champion technology, and yet others put accessibility above everything else. I believe that the Chinese character for "king" holds the key. The character, which is "wang" (王), is composed of four strokes. To my mind, the three horizontal bars represent content, technology and accessibility, which are made whole by the vertical pillar that is integration. In the media today, only integration can be king."

"To carry the analogy further, I believe that the character "wang" actually lacks a stroke, to signify the user. Only by keeping our users firmly in mind can we become both current and mainstream."

"With the addition of a stroke at the top, "wang" becomes "zhu" (主), a character denoting, in one sense, 'that which is fundamental'. And also the word for 'God'. For media organizations, our users are fundamental. And our audience is our god." Jiang added.

Jiang had also shared some of CGTN's own experiences and thoughts: "We are living in an era of unprecedented change, development and integration. The media industry, too, is undergoing a profound reconfiguration. In this new climate, we need to explore new avenues for accelerating and deepening the integrated development of traditional and digital media. Of pressing importance is the need to create an innovative mode of communication by absorbing new technologies and new applications. This is now the consensus among media organizations worldwide."

The media carnival in 2017 was attended by 400 representatives from over 100 media organizations worldwide, and covered wide-ranging topics including how to accelerate and deepen the integrative development of conventional and emerging media, make full use of new technologies and applications to innovate approaches of media dissemination, and how to deal with the challenges commonly faced by the media around the world.