China, African countries eye expanded media cooperation

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02:36

The Fourth Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation opened on Tuesday in Beijing, focusing on the expansion and deepening of the cooperation between the Chinese and African media organizations, as well as the construction of their power of discourse in the international community.

More than 460 government officials and heads of media organizations from 45 African countries and China attended the forum hosted by China’s State Administration of Radio and Television (SART).

While addressing the opening ceremony, Nie Chenxi, minister of the SART said that the China-Africa media cooperation has welcomed “an unprecedented historical opportunity” in recent years, after Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the idea of the “community of shared destiny” between China and Africa.

Nie Chenxi, minister of the SART, delivers a speech at the opening ceremony. /CGTN Photo

The cultural and people-to-people exchanges have always been important to China and Africa. During President Xi’s attendance of the Johannesburg summit of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2015, China promised to facilitate 10,000 African villages with satellite television programs while training 1,000 African media workers.

As China promised to open its door wider during the annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia in April this year, Nie pledged to further promote media cooperation between China and Africa, including enhancing communications in media policies, jointly elevating the power of discourse, and strengthening industrial cooperation.

Sun Yusheng, vice president of China Central Television (CCTV), also indicated the power of discourse in developing countries is still far behind Western countries.

China is the biggest developing country in the world, and Africa is the continent with the highest concentration of developing countries. The development of China and Africa have the most significant position in the world. However, the hysteretic information and out-dated technological innovation remain a common dilemma for all developing countries.

Jean Ping, former chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, said China's development in Africa and the changes it has brought to Africa are utterly different from the series "The Chinese Are Coming," filmed by BBC.

According to Jean Ping's suggestion, China also prepares a series, "Chinese in Africa," Sun added. As a developing country, enhancing the power of discourse is difficult, but it will be stronger when these countries get together.

China and Africa have maintained close communication and cooperation for years. Besides the infrastructure constructions in the realm of satellite cooperation, the exchanges in television programs have seen even more prosperous results.

According to Du Feijin, head of the publicity department of the Communist Party of China's Beijing Municipal Committee, Beijing has been hosting TV drama and film seasons four times in Africa, during each at least 17 films and 400 episodes of TV dramas were presented to the African people in seven languages.

A poster for Chinese TV series "A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era". /CGTN Photo

The translation and dubbing base in Beijing has been qualified to translate TV programs into at least 10 languages. In 2017 alone, the base translated 10,145 episodes of TV series and dubbed 7,875 episodes.

In fact, Chinese TV programs have been widely accepted in Africa in recent years. Many of the hit Chinese TV dramas, such as “A Beautiful Daughter-in-Law Era”, “Go Lala Go” and “Beijing Love Story” have entertained the African people after being dubbed into local languages.

In addition, China and the African countries have also been cooperating in jointly producing TV programs and films. For instance, CGTN Africa, since it was launched in 2012 in Nairobi, has produced a number of localized news programs for the African people while presenting a diversified Africa to the world.

Chinese TV programs on display in Africa. /Xinhua Photo‍

More TV programs, documentaries and films have been jointly made as well.

With the Beijing summit of the Forum for the China-Africa Cooperation slated to be held in September later this year, it is expected that the media cooperation could have a deeper and more profound perspective.

Set up under the framework agreements of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2012, the media forum is held every two years in either China or Africa aiming to strengthen cooperation in the media sector and enhance China-Africa ties.

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