
At the China-South Africa New Media Roundtable, guests from China and South Africa took a group photo. Photo by Chloe Wang
In the early summer, the beautiful jacaranda blooms enthusiastically, making South Africa, a country of rainbows, particularly charming. Recently, the China-South Africa New Media Roundtable was held in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. Dozens of guests from the governments, business circles, media and academic circles of China and South Africa had in-depth exchanges on new media cooperation between the two sides and reached broad consensus. Participants agreed that new media organizations and Internet companies in China and South Africa should strengthen communication and cooperation under the framework of the BRICS cooperation mechanism and the Belt and Road Initiative, enhance their right to speak internationally, and work together to build a community of cyberspace destiny.
BRICS countries work together to promote new media communication.
When discussing the topic of "new media communication and BRICS cooperation", the delegates held that the development of new media in China and South Africa needs more exchanges, learn from each other’s successful experiences within the BRICS mechanism, seize the opportunity of new media development, and help BRICS countries to carry out related work through new media communication means through technological innovation.
Cheetah Mobile Technology Co., Ltd. has rich experience in Internet industry development and product innovation. Cui Ying, vice president of the company, said that the development of new media needs new technologies, and artificial intelligence technology is the core of this era. Technological innovation and technical exchange are important contents of BRICS cooperation. Cheetah Mobile is committed to using technology to make BRICS cooperation more characteristic of the times and make people’s lives better in BRICS countries.
Pang Yi, chief product officer of Sida Times Communication Network Technology Co., Ltd. said that through more than ten years of practice in Africa, we have personally felt that the Internet in Africa is experiencing a leap-forward development. The Internet infrastructure in Africa is rapidly improving, which brings new development opportunities to the media industry. Data intelligence is the core of technological innovation in the future, and content personalization is the general trend, especially for Africa, where cultural content is extremely rich. Sida is setting up a $1 billion fund for the Internet field in Africa, aiming at investing in emerging Internet services in Africa and helping the development of the Internet in Africa.
The South African National Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has 19 radio stations and 5 TV broadcasts. The representatives of SABC who attended the meeting believed that compared with the past, the channels for people to obtain and distribute information have changed greatly with the development of technology, and the relationship between mobile terminals and smart terminals and people’s daily lives is getting closer and closer. The development of Internet technology in China has attracted worldwide attention. Nearly half of the top 20 Internet companies in the world are from China. South Africa and China are both BRICS countries, and the media cooperation between the two countries is an excellent opportunity to communicate and learn new technologies and capabilities. At the same time, South Africa needs to strengthen the supervision of content, the protection of original content, and the infrastructure construction needed for the development of new media also need to keep pace with the development of the times.
South Africa’s private television station eTV also sent representatives to participate in the round table. He said that eTV has established cooperative relations with CRI before, and is willing to continue to cooperate with China enterprises in new media communication, such as content exchange, and at the same time give full play to its own advantages and actively create multimedia, multi-channel and multi-platform services.
The development of Internet technology carries news dissemination.
The topic of "the influence of Internet technologies such as 5G and blockchain on news communication" is a topic of general concern to the media in China and South Africa. Through discussion, everyone fully realized that the development of Internet technology carries the future of news communication, and only innovation is the only way to maintain the media advantage. New media is no longer the content and channel made by professional media organizations, but the integration and infiltration of media industry and other industries, which contains huge opportunities.
Ye Zhenzhen, vice chairman and president of People’s Network Co., Ltd., believes that at present, the media industry is undergoing an all-round technological change, and the industrial ecology is likely to be reconstructed. New technology makes it easier for more people to participate in the production, dissemination and acquisition of information at a lower cost, and everyone will have great opportunities. The evolution of all inventions and technologies has made the popularization of civilization higher and higher, and more and more people have participated in it, while the cost is getting lower and lower. In the new media era, there will be a new socialized division of labor. People’s Daily is willing to cooperate with partners all over the world, including African countries such as South Africa, to innovate the division of labor mode and let the media industry burst into new vitality in the new era.
Kong Yu, vice president of public relations of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., said that 5G will bring various possibilities for industrial integration, and all industries will be informationized in the future. In China, animal husbandry has been networked, which South Africa can learn from. Through 5G, people and life will be fully connected and everything will be connected.
South Africa’s multinational mobile telecommunications company MTN has business in many African countries. Facing the rapid development of media communication technology, MTN also feels the responsibility it should bear and the pressure from its peers in the industry. The company’s delegates said that scientific and technological progress will bring new challenges to the development of media and communication industries, and new models and platforms may emerge at the historic moment. MTN is looking forward to establishing cooperative relations with China enterprises, sharing the successful experience of China Internet and new media companies, and jointly exploring how new technologies can change human life, so as to seize the opportunity to meet the challenges.
New media cooperation between China and South Africa will bring tangible benefits.
At present, the new media cooperation between China and South Africa has entered a period of rapid development. How to grasp the future trend and push the cooperation to a higher level, the delegates have expressed their opinions.
Qian Wei, chairman and general manager of CCTV International Network Co., Ltd., said that he was glad to see the positive attitude of entrepreneurs in Central and South China towards establishing new media cooperation. The Internet has brought the distance between the two peoples and changed people’s lives. The new media cooperation between the two countries can truly realize cultural exchange. The South African people have learned about China’s pandas and martial arts through movies, television and the Internet. We hope to bring the images of South Africa’s cheetahs, giraffes and lions to China through new media. CCTV is willing to further build a new media overseas communication platform, set up a mobile Rubik’s Cube, make media forms more diversified, and make full use of short video technology to realize short, flat and fast information dissemination.
Chen Yong, general manager of Tencent’s public opinion department and deputy general manager of the security management department, said that new media communication has natural advantages in cultural communication. Efficient and diverse forms of communication provide convenience for users to understand the cultures of various countries, enrich the ways for users to understand different cultures, and the rapid development of new media also promotes the progress of cultural communication platforms. Enterprises have the responsibility and obligation to use their own platforms to promote cultural exchanges. Tencent hopes to cooperate with enterprises in South Africa and even the world to provide high-quality content services and promote global cultural exchanges.
Chen Zhifeng, vice president of Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd. said that the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, has become the global nervous system. The globalization of information is closer to the imagined globalization than at any stage. In the first half of this year, ByteDance’s Tiktok and TikTok were the most downloaded iOS apps in the world, and South African users, for example, also recognized TikTok very much. ByteDance will increase its cooperation with South Africa and strive to become a "global platform for creation and exchange" to help cultural exchanges between the two countries.
Many South African companies attending the meeting expressed their willingness to strengthen cooperation with China enterprises. They believed that the representative products of China’s Internet were welcomed by people all over the world and were at the forefront of the world. As a signal transmitter, content production service provider and content distributor in South Africa’s broadcasting industry, SENTECH expressed its hope to cooperate with China enterprises in content production and content dissemination to build a better future in South Africa.
Strengthening network security has been widely recognized.
The security problems brought by the rapid development of the Internet are increasingly prominent, and it is the general trend and the aspiration of the people to promote the reform of the global Internet governance system. The Judicial Committee of the South African Parliament recently formally passed the Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Bill, with the aim of bringing South Africa into line with the cyber law construction and cyber security management of other countries, and strengthening cyber security was also recognized by all the delegates at this meeting.
Ye Zhenzhen said that cyberspace is not a virtual space that has nothing to do with reality, and it should not be an "extra-legal place". It is precisely because of its huge number of users and great influence that it needs to strengthen supervision and positive guidance. The rapid progress of the Internet in China is precisely due to the effective governance of the network, which ensures the healthy and sustainable development of the network ecology. As the mainstream media, people’s network and other media enterprises should play a leading and exemplary role in the new media platform, transmit and protect the mainstream values of society, and make cyberspace develop healthily and sustainably. After years of accumulation, People’s Daily has established a multi-type and multilingual content review team for words, pictures, music and videos, accumulated a group of experienced and high-level employees, established a set of scientific and effective standards, and owned a technical platform with its own intellectual property rights. People’s Daily Online is willing to share experiences and cooperate with media counterparts in African countries to build a better cyberspace.
At the meeting, the Film and Publishing Committee (FPB), the content classification and regulatory body in South Africa, suggested to build a unified content regulatory platform to manage pornography, violence and other issues on the Internet in a unified way and purify the Internet environment. South Africa and other African countries need to actively learn from China’s advanced experience in cyberspace governance, so that the Internet can play a positive role.
Other enterprises attending the meeting also said that the China government’s supervision of the Internet has been effective, and it has become the promoter and protector of the leap-forward development of Internet enterprises. They believe that in order to achieve effective cyberspace supervision, South Africa should first raise public awareness, clarify network violations, and formulate corresponding emergency measures for cyber crimes beyond imagination. Secondly, in order to effectively deal with cyber crimes, we should hold regular forums and other activities to realize effective information sharing, which should not be confined to South Africa, but also require partners like China to share their advanced experience in cyber governance.
Let the innovation and cooperation of new media in China and South Africa start today.
Before the round table ended, Qian Wei made a summary on behalf of China. She said that the meeting successfully reached a beautiful vision of new media colleagues in Central and South China to jointly explore, meet and apply new technologies. Former South African President Nelson Mandela has a saying: The meaning of life is not the simple fact that we were alive, but whether we have brought changes to other people’s lives. In this era full of changes and opportunities, the people of China and South Africa should join hands and act for the change of the country and the world.
In his concluding remarks, the Director-General of the Department of Public Information, Masilo Poloka, spoke highly of the round table. He said that the meeting was very timely and necessary, and the speeches made by the guests at the meeting were wonderful, which built a good platform for the new media regulators in China and South Africa to learn from each other and explore cooperation and exchanges between online information companies. China has rich experience in the field of new media supervision, and South Africa needs to learn from these practices. It is hoped that such a meeting can form a mechanism and be included in the memorandum of cooperation or action plan between the two countries.
He said that the new media in China and South Africa should strengthen cooperation in telling good stories about China-Africa cooperation. Some western media have long been biased against China-Africa cooperation, and they often fabricate news reports that China is pursuing colonialism in Africa. The new media in South Africa and China should strengthen cooperation, tell the story of China-Africa cooperation well, give voice to China and Africa, grasp the right to speak by public opinion, push the international community to look at China-Africa cooperation more objectively, and create a good public opinion atmosphere for China-Africa cooperation.