Beijing Plans International Media Expansion

As widely reported in the foreign media, three major state-owned Chinese media organizations - China Central TV (CCTV), Xinhua and People's Daily - could receive around RMB45.0 billion (US$6.6 billion) in funding from the Ministry of Finance to expand their business overseas.

CCTV has already announced plans to add Russian and Arabic channels to its line up, which already includes English, French and Spanish language channels. People's Daily is also planning to launch an English-language version of its Global Times newspaper in May 2009. The new paper will be the second national English language paper in China after China Daily. The state-run news agency Xinhua plans to launch an Asia-based network modeled on Al-Jazeera.

While the Chinese language press has been strangely silent on the new funding for overseas media expansion, all three organizations have launched major recruitment campaigns for foreign talent to provide the manpower for the expansion.

Although this may seem like new news to the international mainstream press, the fact of the matter is that China has been engaged in a campaign to "push Chinese content and culture to the outside world" for a number of years. Recent press reports are simply the latest manifestation of this long standing program.

The Chinese government has initiated a number of ambitious programs designed to boost its international "soft power" across all media sectors in recent years. Barely a week goes past without the official media publishing a story on the launch of a new international radio channel or TV station, or impressive-sounding official figures on the growth in overseas licensing and exports of TV content, films, animation, etc, etc.

At the same time, Chinese activities at major international fairs such as MIPTV and MIPCOM are designed to highlight Chinese content to the rest of the world, not to position the Chinese TV industry as a buyer of foreign content only. Indeed, the upcoming MIPTV market in March will feature a China focus, high level SARFT officials, an expanded China pavilion, and a record number of Mainland attendees.

For the international markets, the timing is remarkable, given the budget cuts and general belt-tightening measures the current financial environment has forced on other international players.

China sees the current market malaise as an opportunity to expand its international media presence around the world to not only "promote the Chinese viewpoint" but also, through cooperation outside China, to increase the managerial capability of its own media executives. However, by expanding overseas while still restricting foreign players from entering the local industry, they can achieve these objectives without having to open up their own, sensitive markets.