Details

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Shanghai invited Chinese media experts and journalists to take part in an expert discussion over breakfast to discuss recent developments of the Chinese media under the influence of new media like microblogs and social networks.

At first the Media Programme Asia of the KAS was introduced by Paul Linnarz. Since a few years the regional programme has been dealing with the role of new media and the changes within traditional media in Asia. This development has been recognised in China too, and Chinese journalists were among the first to organise themselves in online communities in order to obtain and to spread information. Blogs and microblogs are more and more often becoming the source of journalistic work: Issues, firstly discussed only in the internet, are finding their ways into newspapers as well as TV and radio programmes. Moreover a growing number of examples can be found that discussions in social networks and blogs lead to the revision of decisions of public authorities. The Chinese population is aware of the growing influence of online debates and uses them to protect their own rights.

In a second expert talk Paul Linnarz and several Chinese and international journalists discussed the internationalisation strategy of the state owned Chinese media. In recent years the Chinese government invested a lot in the extension of its media offers in English and other foreign languages. Thereby, as part of Beijing’s public diplomacy, the Chinese point of view on national and international developments is supposed to reach a wider audience.