Challenges for China's media as more people read news online

MEDIA OPERATORS in mainland China are having to transform their business to the new era of digital and social networking in line with changes in consumer behaviour, even though most of them are state-owned. 

“We have had to develop our business from print media to cover social media, including an application and website platform. Because of customers’ behavioural changes, we have had to transform our business to match their lifestyle, although we are state-owned,” Li Xia, deputy editor-in-chief of China Pictorial, a subsidiary of China International Publishing Group, said last week at a presentation about the business to a press group.

China International Publishing Group, the largest publishing group in China, is owned 100 per cent by the government.

China Pictorial publishes magazines in up to 26 languages for distribution in both China and overseas. It also publishes Vogue magazine in Chinese.

Established in 1950, more than 50 per cent of China Pictorial’s revenue is from the government, and the remainder from advertising and magazine sales.

She said China’s media sector had to reform its business just like other media around the globe, as people’s lifestyles were changing and they now had more choice to select media though several channels, and especially via new platforms such as smart-phone applications, digital media and websites.

As a result, China Pictorial had also had to develop the business to cover all of the modern era’s media platforms.

He Zhanjun, deputy editor-in-chief of the Xinjiang branch of Xinhua News Agency, said the media sector in China had to transform itself in light of the global shift in how information is sought and received. 

“Today’s media industry has entered an era in which the content takes the lead, the network plays a dominant role, the terminals are well recognised, technologies are highly valued, and the audiences are inclusively respected,” he said.

At present, public opinion fights in the main two fields of mass media – traditional and new – with new media such as the Internet having become the main battlefield, he said.

Domestically, negative or misleading remarks and organised illegal activities in China are piled up on the Internet, challenging the dominant position of the mainstream of public opinion, he said, adding that it was more arduous for the mainstream of public opinion to effectively guide increasingly diversified ideologies in Chinese society, maintain social stability and serve the development of the Chinese economy. 

He said Xinhua News Agency had also had to build a new media platform and terminal, as represented by Xinhua News Agency Releases and Xinhuatone.com.

The company will also mount more big screens outdoors, so as to have them interconnected in certain areas and share the same mass-communication network in society.

“Our overseas branches of the agency also need to be more pre-emptive in putting in place resources at the forefront. We also work hard to promote the operating level of our legal-entity accounts in overseas social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube,” he explained. 

But it is not only China’s media, as media operators around the world are having to change their business, as people’s behaviour changes and the sector faces higher competition as a result, the deputy editor-in-chief said.