"The voice of Asia is far smaller than it deserves to be," said Zhao. "Asia cannot depend solely on foreign media to speak for it, because its own media are more connected with the region's interests, values, cultural traditions and beliefs."

"Asian countries should set up their own strong media for the sake of speaking for themselves, reporting the facts about their countries and speaking out to safeguard their national interests," he added.

Zhao said this during a panel discussion on the globalization and industrialization of the media at this year's annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia, which closed on Saturday.

Statistics indicate that currently some two-thirds of the news in the world comes from the developed countries, with one-seventh of the world's population. News from developed countries accounts for 60 percent of the news content of newspapers in developing countries.

"It is obvious that the news sources and the economic capacity of a country are closely related," said Zhao. "This is leading developing countries to worry that their own news and programs will be overshadowed by those from outside."

Zhao, who is to lead a delegation of Chinese media to visit Japan later this year, said that it is China's policy to give priority to developing ties with media in other countries, while following the thrust of the forum, which stresses cooperation in Asia.

With the pilot debut of the Time-Warner entertainment program in Guangzhou in South China, many foreign media are expecting wider access to the Chinese market.

Localization and customization were stressed during the Saturday panel discussion of the future of media.

Matt Roberts, chief representative of China Dow Jones & Company, noted that while the need for information is growing, customization is also a necessity for information providers to survive in the marketplace.

(China Daily April 15, 2002)