The Xinhua News Agency of China is focusing to become a Media Giant in the World, Mr. Zhou Xisheng, Vice President of Xinhua News Agency has declared. The Vice President disclosed this to journalists from Africa and Asia at the closing of the World Media Training Summit held in Beijing, organized by the World Media Secretariat and spearheaded the Xinhua News Agency of Beijing. He said currently his outfit was providing the world subscribers with news and financial information products in the form of text, photo, graphics, audio and mobile phone text messages 24 hours a day in eight languages including Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Japan. He indicated that in the latest move of Xinhua News Agency to expand into a modern, Multi-Media News and information service provider, it had launched a Video News Service, English News TV, a Mobile phone TV station and a multi-media news desk. He said currently Xinhua News Agency had about 140 bureaus worldwide and stressed that plans were far advanced to open more offices in Africa and Asia and to also train local journalists in those countries to mount bureaus in their respective countries. ”Journalists in Africa and Asia would be trained in multi-media journalism to mount our local offices”, he emphasized. He stressed the need for Media organizations and media practitioners in Asia and Africa to reposition themselves by moving away from the traditional media into the new media era to enable them to live up to the competition in the media landscape. ”Media outlets, editors and journalists in the developing world need to pay more attention to the fast changing situation of the traditional media to remain relevant”, he stated. Mr Xisheng explained that the emergence of new media had altered the traditional media landscape of TV, Newspapers and Radio and pointed out that there was need to diversify into the Multi media such as graphics, audio, video and mobile phone text messages to retain a grip of the current situation. The Xinhua vice president said the Chinese State News Agency was keeping tap with the new developments in the global media industry, and assured African and Asian countries that they could count on China to continuously train the manpower needed to overcome the challenges posed by new media. He told the media representatives drawn from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Tanzania, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Siri, Lanka and Pakistan that China was ready to forge a partnership with Asian and African state-owned media outlets to report more on development journalism and enhance the socio economic wellbeing of the people in their countries. Mr Peter Ngomba Efande of the Cameroon News and Publishing Corporation who spoke on behalf of the participants, thanked the Xinhua News Agency for organizing the ten-day media training program and said it would enhance the capacity of the journalists to perform effectively. Mr Efande said the training sessions and the field trips had exposed the African and Asian journalists to the development trends of China in the areas of technology and infrastructure. He said the knowledge acquired at the summit which focused on trends in the global media industry, with resource persons drawn from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Associated Press, Al-Jazeera and Reuters, would be important in confronting the issues facing the media in Asian and African countries. Source: GNA