Tian Congming, president of Xinhua News Agency, hosted a reception in Beijing Tuesday evening, marking the 70th anniversary of Xinhua's founding.
Tian said Xinhua now has many challenges in keeping with the new methods of news dissemination such as Internet-related technology and has many rivals equipped with digital tools.
He vowed that his organization would further improve the quality of various products.
At the same time, Xinhua is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with other news organizations in the world including wire services, newspapers, radio, television and websites, Tian said.
At present, Xinhua releases 1.8 million words in news in seven languages and 290 news photographs each day to over 10,000 domestic and overseas subscribers.
More than 250 ambassadors to China, press officials, correspondents, and representatives from international organizations attended the reception.
Founded on November 7, 1931, in Ruijin, east China's Jiangxi Province, Xinhua has built up a news collecting network covering 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, as well as more than 100 countries and regions world-wide.
Immediately after the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington were attacked by terrorists on September 11 this year, eight correspondents of Xinhua News Agency's New York bureau and another 10 in Washington began to report on the scene, writing many news reports and feature stories on the events.
Within eight hours of the terror attacks, Xinhua's New York bureau filed 170 news items in English to its overseas subscribers worldwide, while the International News Department in Beijing, where the head office of the news agency is based, released 30 news reports in Chinese to its users both at home and abroad.
The news stories were then quickly translated into Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese and transmitted to Xinhua's subscribers around the globe.
Xinhua's other overseas bureaus, besides New York and Washington, also immediately sent back reports about the reactions of the countries where they are located, and other relevant news stories. Xinhua's prompt and intensive coverage of the terror attacks benefited from its worldwide bureaus and a large number of correspondents posted overseas.
At present Xinhua has 105 overseas bureaus and regional offices with 551 staff members.
Xinhua's overseas bureaus are in charge of collecting international news. In the spring of 1948, Xinhua set up its first overseas bureau in Prague, capital of the then Czechoslovakia. By the end of 1950, another four overseas bureaus were established, respectively in Pyongyang, Moscow, New Delhi and Berlin.
In 1953, Xinhua held its first conference of overseas bureaus, at which the international news reporting policy of "based in the country, aiming at China as well as the East and the whole world" was decided. In early 1956, the International News Department instituted a working plan for development of its overseas correspondents network, while opening new bureaus in 10 places: London, Karachi, Ulan Bator, Budapest, Phnom Penh, Sofia, Kabul, Cairo, Bucharest and Tirana. Since then, the number of Xinhua's overseas bureaus has maintained a stable growth, gradually spreading to the five continents of the world.
Xinhua's regional offices abroad are responsible for handling news stories in foreign languages of the regions where they located in. In 1983, Xinhua decided to speed up the process of building a world-level news agency, and began to comprehensively reform its international news coverage undertaken by the International News Department. The reform was aimed at shifting its priority from domestic subscribers to overseas users. Xinhua realized 24-hour reporting instead of two work shifts each day at year, and began to implement the principle of transmitting news stories to different regions separately.
In January 1984, Xinhua set up its first regional office - the Asian-Pacific Regional Office - in Hong Kong, which was assigned to edit and file English news reports written by 19 Xinhua overseas bureaus including those in Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Macao. The Asian-Pacific Regional Office now has more than 100 editors, correspondents and other staff members.
In 1991, Xinhua launched an Asia-Pacific special news service to provide news stories for the media in the Asia-Pacific region. The Asian-Pacific Regional Office usually will dispatch additional reporters to cover important events occurring in the region in a timely, comprehensive, objective and impartial manner. The reporters will write a large number of news reports, most of which are for the media in the Asia-Pacific region and a number of important ones will be broadcast by Xinhua for subscribers in other regions of the world.
The Asian-Pacific Regional Office broadcasts more than 70 news items daily and has more than 800 direct news and information subscribers.
In September 1985, Xinhua opened its Latin America Regional Office in Mexico City. The office is in charge of coordinating news coverage by Xinhua bureaus in the region, and together with the Spanish language news desk in the head office, edits and releases news reports in Spanish for Xinhua's Spanish news service.
As a matter of fact, Xinhua's Spanish language news service started as early as 1958 to provide news to its subscribers in Latin America. Initially, the service broadcast only about 30 stories daily, mostly news about China. The number of stories released by the service later gradually rose to 80 to include new servants around the globe.
The Spanish language news service has made much progress in reporting both in depth and scope since the establishment of the Latin America Regional Office. So far, the service releases more than 280 news items each day, and has opened over 20 columns including Major World News, Review of Asian-Pacific Economy, Latin America Today, Review of Latin American Cultures, and Weekly World Petroleum. These columns have provided more options to such subscribers as radios, TV stations, newspapers and magazines.
Portuguese is the official language of Brazil, one of the largest countries in Latin America. To improve its news service to the media in Portuguese-speaking countries such as Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique and Angola, Xinhua opened a Portuguese language news service in 1995. The Portuguese news editorial department in Rio de Janeiro releases about 45 news items every day and has 43 news subscribers in Rio and Brasilia alone.
After years' development, Xinhua now has more than 470 news subscribers in Latin America, and its news reports are not only widely used by important newspapers, radios and TV stations in the region, but are also re-broadcast by news agencies in countries such as Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela.
Africa is one of the regions to which Xinhua has paid much of its attention in its international news reporting, and the African Continent has the largest number of Xinhua overseas bureaus. Xinhua has 24 bureaus in Africa, with 11 of them in French-speaking countries in the region, and quite a number of the bureaus are also in charge of news coverage of neighboring countries.
In 1986, Xinhua established its Africa Regional Office in Nairobi responsible for English news reporting in the region, and since then Xinhua has made great progress in its news service to the African continent.
In 1958, Xinhua opened its French language news service, and to improve its service to French-speaking nations, the agency set up a French news editorial department in Paris in 1995 and upgraded the department to the Regional Office for French-Speaking Countries in 1999, which, together with the relevant news desk in the head office, is in charge of editing and releasing news reports for the French language news service.
Xinhua opened dispatches-releasing stations in Africa as early as the 1950s. Before the mid-1980s, each such station issued 200 to 300 English or French Xinhua news dispatches each day to local media organizations and government departments. Now Xinhua has constructed a high-speed private network in the region capable of transmitting data, voice, files and pictures to provide news to more than 1,000 subscribers in the African region. Each day, Xinhua provides around 300 news items in English and over 100 news reports in French to its African users. Xinhua's correspondents and editors working in the region have a deep affection for Africa and the African people. Their news stories honestly record and reflect the progress of the African continent and the changes in the life of the African people, and are favorably received by the media and readers in the region.
In 1985, Xinhua established its Middle East Regional Office in Cairo, which is in charge of English and Arabic news reporting in countries of that region. As early as in 1964, Xinhua opened its Arabic language news service to provide news service to media organization in Arabic countries. At present, the Arabic news service releases an average of 187 news reports in Arabic every day to its 81 subscribers in 17 countries, which include 15 news agencies, 52 newspapers and magazines, two TV stations and 10 other users.
The Russian language news service, which mainly serves Eurasian subscribers, was the second foreign language news service opened by Xinhua following the English news service. The number of news items filed by the news service has steadily increased since its opening in 1956. The Russian news service so far has more than 200subscribers in the Eurasian region, including more than 100 in Russia, Ukraine and their neighboring countries, 65 in Central Asian countries and over 10 in the three Baltic states.
In addition to regional news services - the Asia-Pacific English news service, the Spanish news service, the French news service, the Arabic news service, the Russian news service and the Portuguese news service, Xinhua has two services to serve all its overseas subscribers: English Broadcast and the Chinese language news for overseas service. English broadcast is Xinhua's major channel to provide news service overseas, which provides users with news reports covering the whole world. On the average, the broadcast daily releases in English 186 international news items, 76 domestic news reports and 42 sports news stories. The Chinese language news for overseas service is a news service by which Xinhua provides Chinese-language media abroad with Chinese language news reports. The service files on the average 46 international news items, 80 domestic news reports and 40 sports news stories to nearly 800 subscribers each day.
(Xinhua New Agency November 6, 2001)
