TEHRAZ AHMED

Roll no. :27

China: Mass Media System

The Constitution of the People's Republic of China guarantees citizens' freedom of speech and
information. Since the 1980s, the mass media are growing more diversified as they extend their
reach throughout China through a multiplicity of transmission methods including satellite,
wireless and wired systems. Today there are over 2,000 newspapers, over 9,000 magazines, 273
radio stations and 352 TV stations. By the end of 2005, there were 774 medium- and short-wave
radio transmitting and relay stations, 125.69 million households with access to cable television,
and 1.22 million households in 30 cities with access to cable digital television, covering 94.5
percent and 95.8 percent of the population respectively

News Agencies

Headquartered in Beijing, Xinhua News Agency is China's official news agency, as well as one of
the world's major news agencies with more than 100 branches in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East,
Latin America, Africa and other regions. In 2003, its subordinate Xinhua Financing Network Ltd.
formed an international alliance with Agence France-Presse (AFP) of Finance. Xinhua Financial
Network Ltd. purchased the news agencies of AFP Asian Finance in Hong Kong, Japan, South
Korea, and Singapore and eight other Asian countries and regions, which expanded the
coverage of Xinhua News Agency's international network.

China News Service, also Beijing-based, mainly supplies news to overseas Chinese, foreign
citizens of Chinese origin, and compatriots in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the
Macao Special Administrative Region, and Taiwan.

Newspapers

Between 1950 and 2000, the number of Chinese newspapers increased nearly ten-fold. In 2005,
more than 1,000 kinds of daily newspaper were published in China, with their circulation
reaching 100 million, the highest figure of any country in the world. Targeted at different reader
groups, newspaper formats are becoming increasingly diverse and colorful. Recent years have
seen an important trend of newspaper reorganization. To date, 39 newspaper groups have been
established, for example, Beijing Daily Newspaper Group, Wenhui Xinmin Associated Newspaper
Group and Guangzhou Daily Newspaper Group. Since 2003, trans-regional cooperation among
the print media has become a new trend. The Beijing News, invested and run by the Guangming
Daily Newspaper Group and the Nanfang Daily Newspaper Group, was the first to receive formal
government approval to publish trans-regionally. Not to be left out,Shanghai also presented
Orient Observation Weekly, its largest shareholder being the Beijing-based Xinhua News Agency.

Radio

China National Radio, China's official radio station, has nine channels broadcasting a total of
200 hours per day via satellite. Every province, autonomous region and municipality has its own
local radio stations.

China Radio International (CRI) is the only state-level radio station targeting overseas audiences.
It has 300 hours of programs daily beamed across the globe in 38 foreign languages, Mandarin
Chinese and four Chinese dialects. The programs cover news, current affairs, comment,
entertainment, as well as politics, economy, culture, science and technology. Currently, CRI
ranks third in overseas broadcasting time and languages among the world's overseas service
radio stations.

Television

China's television industry has become a complete system with high-tech program production,
transmission and coverage. China Central Television (CCTV), China's largest and most powerful
station, has business relations with more than 250 television organizations in over 130
countries and regions. Following a global television industry trend, CCTV has moved toward
specialization, introducing three specialized channels -- News and Children's Program in 2003,
and Music in 2004.

Altogether there are 3,000 television stations across the country. Large international expositions,
including the Shanghai Television Festival, Beijing International Television Week, China Radio
and Television Exposition and Sichuan Television Festival, are held on a regular basis. Besides
judging and conferring awards, these festivals conduct academic exchanges and the import and
export of TV programs. Shanghai has grown into Asia's largest television program
tradingmarket.

The Internet

Since the mid-1990s, China's traditional media have been supported with online media and of
China's 10,000-odd news media across the country, 2,000 have gone online. Quite a number of
famous websites have begun to appear, relying on information flow from the news media, and
taking advantage of the latter's superior news coverage. Experts predict the merging in the 21st
century of traditional and internet media into a multi-media news platform combining sound,
image and text.

Wowzine, established by www.southcn.com in August 2005, is one example of the wildfire

expansion of online magazines. Since TV programs became available on cell phones via the
whole network of China Mobile in September 2005, China Mobile has recruited over 150,000
subscribers to such services. There are three main ways of sending news media images and
text to palmtops -- SMS messages, cell-phone reports and WAP sites. Many news websites are
trying out "cell-phone newspapers." The China Daily website, for example, has developed a
Chinese-English information service system to send the latest images and text reports on major
happenings in China to subscribers' cell phones.

On January 1, 2006, www.gov.cn, the official website of the Chinese government formally
opened as a comprehensive platform for the State Council and subordinate departments, and
for governments at all levels to release information and offer online services.

Multi-media Groups

Since China entered the WTO, the trend within China's media industry has been to form inter-
media and trans-regional media operated on multiple patterns so as to meet competition and
challenges from powerful overseas media groups. In 2001, the government put forward a goal
of establishing trans-regional multi-media news groups. It also instituted detailed regulations on
fund raising, foreign-funded cooperation and trans-media expansion. The China Radio, Film and
Television Group, founded in 2001, integrated the resources of central level radio, television and
film organizations plus those of the many radio, television and Internet companies, to become
China's biggest and strongest multi-media group, covering television, Internet, publishing,
advertising, etc.

China's media are cooperating with overseas media groups. Since 2003, 30 overseas television
stations, including Phoenix Satellite TV, Bloomberg Finance, Star TV, Euro Sports News and
China Entertainment TV have landed, with conditions, on China's mainland. At the same time,
CCTV's English language channel has reached US audiences via the News Group's Fox News
Network.