China and Sri Lanka released a joint initiative on media cooperation and an action plan for media exchanges at a seminar in Colombo on Friday, according to a report by Xinhua, China’s state news agency.
More than 80 guests from government departments, media organisations, think tanks and universities in both countries attended, Xinhua said.
Who spoke
Sri Lankan Deputy Minister of Mass Media Kaushalya Ariyarathne gave the opening speech. She said cooperation between the two countries’ media in recent years showed that media are “no longer merely a means of transmitting information” but had become a tool for promoting mutual understanding and people-to-people exchange.
Both countries treat media as an important area of bilateral cooperation and see a need to respond jointly to the challenges and opportunities created by new technologies, she said, adding that the seminar could help sustain dialogue between the two sides.
Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Wei Huaxiang said media exchanges and personnel visits had grown closer in recent years, and that the embassy invites Sri Lankan journalists to China each year for study visits. He said he hoped the two sides would deepen the cooperation mechanism and work together on news reporting, content production, personnel training and technological innovation.
Fan Daqi, vice president of the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies, also addressed the seminar. The academy is a research institute under China’s state media apparatus.
The framing
Xinhua reports the seminar’s stated theme as the role of media in “building the China-Sri Lanka community with a shared future” — a formulation drawn from Beijing’s standard diplomatic language, used across its bilateral relationships, rather than a Sri Lankan term.
The agency reports participants as holding that media organisations “must responsibly report on both sides’ development, clearly explain the essence of bilateral cooperation, promote mutual respect.”
Xinhua does not report any discussion of editorial independence, and quotes no participant raising it.
A single-source account
This report rests entirely on Xinhua, which is owned and directed by the Chinese state and was both a likely participant in and the sole reporter of the event. Readers should weigh it accordingly.
No Sri Lankan verified newsroom had published an account at the time of writing. Searches across the Daily Mirror, Ada Derana, NewsFirst, Hiru News, the Daily News, News.lk, Colombo Gazette, the Island, Daily FT and EconomyNext returned no independent report, despite the attendance of a serving deputy minister and more than 80 guests.
One dating note: Xinhua’s report carries a 12 September dateline but places the seminar “on Friday”, which was 11 September.
Not reported
Xinhua does not say what the initiative or the action plan actually commit either side to, whether either document is binding, who signed them, or whether they will be published. It does not name the Sri Lankan media organisations that attended or say which body convened the seminar or funded it.
It gives no detail on the scale of the journalist study-visit programme the ambassador described — how many Sri Lankan reporters travel each year, who selects them, or who meets the cost.
