It is worth mentioning that China has been advancing its national endeavors more than ever before leveraging its mammoth development capacities, technological growth, diplomatic strength, and other related advantages. This being the case, the country has continued moving every so often into unprecedented heights and new frontiers in the shortest possible time.
In actual fact, China's rapid development has sustained to be the talk of the entire world on the grounds that the country has been working around the clock with a focus on reaching the pinnacle of development at the earliest possible juncture.
As China knows the secret of rapid development and growth like the back of its hand, every so often the country witnesses a broad range of advancements bringing into play broad range effective strategies.
Notwithstanding the fact that China's adversaries work around the clock to obstruct its development, the country has sustained taking the bull by the horns and moving forward.
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While China a remains committed to global cooperation and shared prosperity , certain groups persistently attempt to back the world into a corner.
To get back to my point, China has undergone a broad range of steps in taking its print and electronic media to the next level of accomplishment at the earliest possible time. At first, the whole thing was not as easy as falling off a log. However, through its determination and hard work, the various media outlets of the country set in motion moving forward in the right direction.
To figure out a lot about the nitty-gritty of China's Mews media, I went through various books. One book that caught my attention was "Development of China's News Media, "which provides a straightforward and detailed overview of the country's media landscape.
According to the book, China's news media industry has entered the stage of depending integration with digital and intelligent technologies, and become increasingly data-driven, intelligent technologies, and become increasingly data-driven, intelligent, integrated, and platform-based and socialized. The effectiveness of the Omni-media communication system has been comprehensively improved.
With the rapid development of China's internet industry, various media at all levels have been leveraging Internet platforms to improve their quality and efficiency, enhance the effect of Omni-media communication, adjust the production and consumption structure and shape their characteristics through " brand columns+ features," while empowering industry growth with AI technology.
According to the 54th China Statistical Report on Internet Development, as of June 2024, the number of internet uses in China was close to 1.1 billion, an increase of 7.42 million from December 2023, and the internet penetration rate reached 78.0 %.
As of May 2024, there were 3,606 Internet news information service units providing 14,228 licensed services including 1,912 Internet sites, 3,294 applications, and 8,862 public accounts.
According to the book, in 2023, newspapers across China recorded a total of 26.01 billon copies printed, amounting to 69.37 billion printed pages; the total subscription value was 35.57 billion yuan, with 325, 000 issues published and an annual distribution of 25.84 billon copies.
In 2023, the 2,168 newspaper publishing entities nationwide collectively published 2,405 distinct newspaper titles offering a diverse range of categories that covered all aspects of economic, social and cultural development, catering to readers' multifaceted needs. Specifically, there were 1,599 general newspapers, 109 broadcast and television newspapers and 697 university campus newspapers.
Among the general newspapers, there were 490 Party-affiliated newspapers, 318 regional city newspapers, such as evening papers and urban dailies,585 specialized newspapers on such themes as economics, industry, agriculture, healthcare, broadcasting and arts, 71 lifestyle and service-oriented newspapers covering health and consumer topics, 112 readership-specific newspapers targeting workers, youth, women, children and seniors and 23 digest newspaper titles.
Additionally, China published 87 newspapers in minority languages serving the main ethnic groups that use their narrative scripts. Foreign language newspapers totaled 22 including publications in English, Russian, Japanese, and Korean.
Newspaper media at all levels actively developed omni-media brands and columns, expanded online business and created a new dynamic of newspaper-network interaction and integrated development. They made full use of social platforms such as WeChat AND Weibo, their apps, and other mobile terminal platforms to broaden news communication channels and realize real-time communication, in-depth interpretation and all-round display of news reports.
People's Daily furthered in-depth converged media development and accelerated the pace of integration in terms of institutional mechanisms, policy measures, process management, talent, and technology. After the Chinese language and English-language apps, the PD Live, and the PD creator, People's Daily launched its video app " Shijie," which integrates video production and communication resources inside and outside the organization and diversifies its platform functions to serve the people, the government and high-quality economic development.
In March 2024, it realized the micro-video "Speech for Spring: Forward," in which the famous actor You Benchang shares his life stories attracting 660 million views on the internet.
Today's People's Daily is more than a newspaper in the traditional sense; it has evolved into a new-type mainstream media with more than 10 kinds of carriers such as newspapers, periodicals, networks, terminals, WeChat/Weibo platforms, screens and accounts, 34 kinds of publications, 537 online media platforms, 18,000 e-newspaper bulletin points and an omni-media user base of more than 1.5 billion. Its dissemination scope, persuasion power, influence and credibility kept growing.
China Daily has been actively advancing integrated development significantly enhancing the influence of its English-language app and social media accounts on platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Facebook, X and Instagram, both domestically and internationally, with an omin-media user base of more than 470 million.
The app itself amassed over 42 million downloads becoming the first English-language news app in China to surpass 10 million downloads. China Daily operates over 120 social media accounts including a primary Facebook accounts with more than 110 million followers from around the globe.
It has also established popular studios such as Xiaopeng's Studio and Qidi Studio (Fact Check), which have produced a lot of engaging and highly effective promotional content.
China Youth Daily owns China Youth Daily, Elite Reference, China Youth Writers, Youth.cn, CYOL.com and " Bee"- a leading brand of short news videos in China, operates five clients and more than 200 accounts on Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and other social platforms and produces hundreds of pieces of original news and nearly 100 audio and video works every day for public communication on the internet. As of the end of 2023, its omin-media users exceed 310 million.
Xinhua Daily regards omni-media production as the fundamental path for expanding content production capacity. It invested nearly 100 millon yuan in building a first-class omin-media command center in China, built the first 5G Media convergence laboratory in Jiangsu Province, a 5G Convergence media service platform and an intelligent media management platform and actively used the latest technologies such as AI broadcasting and robot writing.
By the end of 2023, there were more than 50, 000 institutions providing radio, television and online audiovisual services across the country including 2,521 radio and television broadcasting institutions. There were 2,099 county-level radio and television broadcasting institutions ( including radio and television stations and county-level converged media centers), accounting for 83.26% of the total , and 375 at the prefecture level, 45 at the provincial level and two at the national level.
There were 6,093 radio frequencies and TV channels nationwide, of which 1,140 radio frequencies and 1,143 TV channels were operated by radio and television broadcasting institutions at or above the prefecture level and 1,764 radio frequencies and 2,046 TV channels by radio and television broadcasting institutions at the county level.
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Radio and television program production continued to flourish. In 2023, 156 TV dramas, 199 online dramas, 329 online movies, 507 online cartoons, 557 key online short drams, 345 TV cartoons and 432 documentaries produced by provincial-level stations were released.
According to the statics of "China Audiovisual Big Data" (CVB), in 2023, 467, 000 hours of TV programs were broadcast on the national satellite channels including 65,000 hours of news programs whose total audience reach rate was 90.99% and the average daily viewing time per household was 44. 2 minutes claiming the largest audience size of all types of programs.
In 2023, high quality TV dramas continued to appear and covered a wide range of themes with 893 TV dramas broadcast by China Media Group (CMG) and local satellite TV stations, a year-on-year increase of 1.6% and an annual broadcast time of 151,000 hours with a total audience reach rate of 90.84% and the average daily viewing time of 73.8 minutes per household.
In addition 1,108 documentaries were broadcast throughout the year with more than 119,000 episodes of 57,000 hours, a total audience reach rate of 82.10% and an average daily viewing time of 13.8 minutes per household.
Cultural and artistic programs were broadcast for 52,000 hours and 45,000 hours respectively ranking fourth and fifth by the broadcast time among various types of programs with a total audience reach rate of 88.01% and 73.70 % respectively. Public-interest advertisement were broadcast for 14,000 hours throughout the year with 1,021 views per TV viewer.
Several representative works with thematic characteristics and reflecting the depth of the times emerged in various places.
CMG combined thoughts, arts and technology to continue to advance innovation in high quality programs across the whole chain in all aspects and fields to enhance their ideological value, cultural richness, emotional resonance, and production sophistication.
Complied by Addisalem Mulat
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 25 MAY 2025
