CHINA DAILY

It is a great pleasure to gather with old and new friends in the beautiful city of Santiago. The China-Latin America Media Summit is held at a historical moment when Chinese President Xi Jinping is paying a state visit to three Latin American countries and attending the 24th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting. Against such a background, holding the media summit under the theme of "Media Organizations Working Together for Better China-Latin America Cooperation" and having discussions for common development is of great and special significance. On behalf of China's State Council Information Office, I would like to extend my warm welcome to all attendees and heartfelt gratitude to all parties for their hard work in preparing for the summit.

Despite the long distance between China and Latin American and Caribbean countries, their peoples have enjoyed natural amity and long-standing friendliness. In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited Latin America three times and had frequent meetings and close contacts with Latin American and Caribbean leaders at major international conferences and other occasions, and together they reached extensive consensuses on a range of issues of common concern. China and Latin America have formed a comprehensive partnership of equality, mutual benefits and common development, and both sides are working hard to create a new "five-pronged" landscape featuring political sincerity and trust, win-win economic and trade cooperation, cultural mutual learning, coordination in international affairs, and reciprocal promotion between overall cooperation and bilateral relations. China-Latin America cooperation in various fields has maintained high-level and high-speed progress.

China and Latin America couldn't have achieved such good relations today without the efforts of their media, which have paid more attention and reported more intensively on each other in recent years. Chinese media have reported on Latin America's economic transformation and its pragmatic cooperation with China in support of its reinvigoration and collective rise. During the Rio Olympic Games, Chinese reporters showed Chinese audiences the social progress and improving lives of people in Latin America, either through written or televized reports. Mainstream Latin American media such as Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo, Argentina's Agencia TELAM, Mexico News Daily and Chile's American Economy magazine also produced in-depth coverage of the G20 Hangzhou Summit held in China, and worked with major Chinese media like Xinhua News Agency, China Daily and CCTV in such aspects as the provision of reports and the production of special pages. Their rich and vibrant joint reports received a good response. Such media reports have deepened the understanding and friendship between Chinese and Latin American people and laid a solid foundation among the public for the development of bilateral relations.

To keep pushing forward China-Latin American relations in the new era, the media on both sides have to pool their wisdom and power. In today's society, the media is an important force that can guide public opinion, influence government decisions and promote people-to-people understanding. It should give full play to its advantages and play a constructive and conducive role in promoting China-Latin America cooperation.

The media should facilitate progress in China-Latin America relations. Media relations and public opinion are, in a way, the barometer of state-to-state relations, and the media plays an important role in shaping international relations and people's sentiments. The Chinese and Latin American media should bear firmly in mind the general direction of China-Latin America friendliness and common development and take concrete steps to shoulder their responsibility and fulfill their mission. They should proactively guide public opinion, promote the win-win concept, advocate development, and explain the significance and broad prospects of bilateral cooperation, so as to inject new vitality and energy into China-Latin America relations. There have been voices in the international community that derogate the cooperation and friendliness between China and Latin America, which is all the more reason why we should coordinate our stances and work together to be an objective and just voice in response to those misinterpretations, in a bid to create a favorable public environment for China-Latin America relations.