News
Agencies and Newspapers
News agencies: China has
two news agencies??Xinhua (New China) News Agency and China News
Service. Xinhua is the nation??s official news agency, with its head
office in Beijing. Its major task is to collect and distribute important
news and information concerning politics, economy and culture in
both China and the rest of the world. In 1944 Xinhua News Agency
began overseas broadcasting in English, and in 1948 its first overseas
branch was established. Beginning in the 1950s, Xinhua News Agency
has gradually developed into a major international news agency.
Its head office is composed of the Overseas News Department, the
International News Department and other departments. It has major
branch offices in the Asian-Pacific region, the Middle East, Latin
America, Africa and other regions, and more than 100 smaller branches
in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Macao Special
Administrative Region and abroad. Xinhua News Agency now releases
news, news photos and features abroad in Chinese, English, French,
Russian, Spanish, Arabic and other languages. It has offices in
Hong Kong and overseas to publish news releases, offices in Hong
Kong, Paris and London to transmit photos, offices in Asia, Latin
America, the Middle East, Africa, North America, and Western and
Eastern Europe to supply news releases by telex to the local newspapers,
radio stations and news agencies in many languages, and special
communication networks between the head office and its branches
at home and abroad. Xinhua News Agency has signed agreements with
more than 80 overseas news agencies and opinion and news departments
to exchange news and news photos.
With its head office in Beijing,
China News Service 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. Established in 1952, it formally began to broadcast
and airmail news items on October 1 of the same year.
China News Service has branches
and reporting stations in all provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and
the Macao Special Administrative Region, and branches in the United
States, Japan, France, Australia and other countries.
As a comprehensive news agency,
China News Service has modern and diversified news transmission
methods. It covers a wide range of news business, mainly supplying
news dispatches and photos, special dispatches, features and audio-video
products to overseas Chinese media and overseas Chinese organizations.
As an important organization for news exchanges between the mainland
and Taiwan, its journalists have traveled to Taiwan to cover news
and it has received journalists from Taiwan.
Newspapers: In 1950, there
were 205 newspapers in China, putting out more than 400 million
copies a year. Beginning in the 1980s, newspapers have developed
rapidly, and a multi-level and multi-format newspaper structure,
with the Party newspapers at the core, has been formed. Apart from
the Party newspapers and mass organization newspapers, there are
daily, evening, morning and weekly newspapers published according
to their distribution time, and peasants??, workers??, enterprise
and professional newspapers published according to their readers??
professions. Of these newspapers, some focus on transmitting economic,
scientific and technological information, and some aim at satisfying
cultural needs. According to statistics, by 1999, 20.1 billion copies
of national-and provincial-level newspapers had been published.
Currently, the main national newspapers in China are the People??s
Daily and its overseas edition, Guangming Daily, Daily Economic
News, Liberation Army Daily, Chinese Youth News, Chinese Women??s
News, Chinese Education News, China Sports News, Workers?? Daily,
Peasants?? Daily, Science and Technology Daily and the English-language
China Daily.
On June 8, 1998, the
two large newspaper groups Guangming Daily and Daily Economic News
were listed on China??s two stock exchanges, thus becoming the first
national-level newspaper groups in China. On July 25 of the same year,
the Shanghai Wen Hui Bao and Xinmin Evening News joint newspaper group
was set up in Shanghai. This was an important measure to promote news
reforms, and marked a new development stage for Chinese newspapers.
