China's voice is about to get louder all around the world
Shaped like a sharpened pencil jutting into the sky, the building in Beijing that houses Xinhua was designed to symbolise the news agency's role as the voice of the state.
That voice is about to get louder as Xinhua goes beyond the power of the written word and onto the airwaves. It intends to beam cultural programmes and TV news, all with a distinctly Chinese point of view, using television stations from New Delhi to Detroit to Dar Es Salaam.
Building a broadcast network and breaking the 'monopoly and verbal hegemony of the West are important missions that the (communist) party has conferred on us,' Li Congjun , Xinhua's president, said at an annual Xinhua gathering last year.
Xinhua launched a 24-hour Chinese TV channel in January, followed by a round-the-clock English-language channel in July. It has been busy hiring staff, shopping for TV stations abroad and looking for potential local and foreign shareholders.
The news agency's global initiative is part of a broader move by China to use so-called soft power to extend its influence around the world, while giving itself an image makeover, or at least a touch-up. And China is putting its money where it wants its mouth to be: the numbers have not been officially confirmed but it is widely believed that the party's central propaganda department has given Xinhua and two other official media organs, CCTV and People's Daily, 10 billion yuan (HK$11.63 billion) each to expand abroad.
CCTV has been China's official TV broadcaster inside the country and abroad. But to inject competition, the government pushed Xinhua to start broadcasting overseas. To compete, CCTV hopes to have 50 offices open in two years' time, up from just 19 last year. By 2012 CCTV plans to offer 11 channels in seven languages.