China's press circles and so many websites across the nation are still cherishing their fond, sweat memories of June 20th, a joyous day. In the morning of that day, Party General Secretary Hu Jintao came to inspect the office of the People's Daily, the Communist Party of China's (CPC) mouthpiece, and had an online chat with netizens.
Within a span of several minutes, inflows of close to 10 billion pages from websites of major Chinese cities flooded the PD website (www. people. com. cn), and people in their hundreds of millions throughout the country all witnessed General Secretary Hu's online chat with netizens. And a few hours later, Reuters, the Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Russian News Agency "RIA Novosti", and other foreign media released their reportages of this special unexpected event.
Science and technological advances have brought immense changes to the mechanism of news gathering and ways of its communications and recast the pattern of social public opinions. Meanwhile, the reform and opening to the outside world has enabled China's ties with the rest of the world to become ever much closer, whereas the world has paid more attention to China.
The environment of press media undergoes a historical change when the globe has been turned into a "village". So coordination or overall planning has to be viewed from both domestic and international aspects. And the "voice of China" must be sounded more truthfully, more vividly and with a more global approach. This represents the requirement of zeitgeist the CPC Central Committee has set forth for Chinese journalists.
Three full decades of the reform and opening-up have prompted an old, ancient civilized nation to re-enter into the vision of the world. So both China's concern for the world and the world's care or attention to China are unprecedented. A set of ensuing statistics is rather intriguing. A total of 606 reporters from 319 media organizations in 49 countries worldwide had resided in China by December 2006, when an increase of some 100 foreign media organizations were stationed in the country with their total number of journalists resided in the country being double over 2002.
"China fever" with a speedy rise of stationed foreign news organizations has told people that media audience overseas are badly in need of acquainting themselves with latest developments and changes that have occurred in China, and press media constitutes an extremely important channel. Chinese media directly speaks to the world on the one hand and, on the other hand, overseas reporters also get to know latest developments in China via Chinese media, and in turn tell "China's stories" from their respective perspectives.
Consequently, our new reportage represents a showcase for the world to size up China. When technological innovation enables the transmission of news information to do away with the national borders and focus everything under the spotlight, and our news reports, either global or domestic, are speakers of China today, and also creators of the nation's image.
Only when we report China from a global eyesight, can we imbue the nation with enriched contents in our news stories and make it more vivid and life-like before our camera lenses; only when we attach closer importance to global invents and take more initiative in appraising and analyzing the international situation, can we voice China's stance in a vivid and clear-cut way and transmit the "voice of China" more forcefully or vigorously.
China's media organs have been meticulously putting up a platform for the exchange of dialogue between China and the world at large. If there is a devoid of the coordination of initiative in an overall manner for both domestic and international aspects and if there is a devoid of the broad vision of "having our feet firmly planted in our own country while keeping the whole world in view", it will be hard for us to send out the our resounding "voice of China" in a volatile international opinion environment, and also difficult to portray a genuine, all-round image of China in the "global village".
China is now amid a special period of hard times: The entire nation is overwhelmed by grief and sorrow for quake victims and strives to rebuild homes of the quake affected people with a staunch, indomitable national spirit on one hand and, on the other hand, it is honoring its solemn commitment to the world by exerting itself to hold a grand, successful Olympic Games.
The special feelings of grief mingled with joy have set even higher demands for Chinese news media circles, namely, how to be more open and gain more leverage when telling the world "China's stories", how to be more thorough-going and reasonable while reporting global news events, how to increase the appeal and impact of China's position in the environment of multi-international public opinions. This poses the topic of the times that has to be reponded to or deal with the "overall arrangements from both the domestic and international aspects."
By the People's Daily Online, and its author is senior PD desk editor Lu Xinning
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