The Belt and Road News Network

About the Belt and Road News Network

   People's Daily Online   10:37, April 11, 2019

The Belt and Road News Network (BRNN) was launched in response to a proposal for “building a news network” announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the occasion of the 1st Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation in 2017, which has since won positive response from media organizations worldwide, especially among those in countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

After the 1st BRF, People’s Daily took the initiative to develop extensive contacts with media organizations worldwide and sent invitations to those inclined to collaborate together in building the Belt and Road News Network. In order to effectively function as a news network, People’s Daily proposed to establish a BRNN Council and reached a broad consensus in support of this endeavor.

On April 23, 2019, the First Council Meeting of BRNN was held in Beijing before the opening of the 2nd BRF. Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to those partaking in the meeting. Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, attended the opening ceremony, read the congratulatory message from President Xi and delivered a speech.

The first council was composed of 40 media organizations from 25 countries. People’s Daily, by assuming the role of chair, took on responsibilities for convening council meetings as well as providing coordination and supervision over major issues. The Secretariat of BRNN is based at People’s Daily, and is responsible for the news network’s everyday operations and the execution of council decisions.

The first council meeting deliberated and voted to pass the BRNN’s basic founding documents, including the BRNN Charter, the Council’s Rules of Procedures, and the Annual Work Plan (2019-2020). The website and mobile application for BRNN were also officially launched during the occasion. Both the BRNN and the Silk Road Global News Awards launched by the Network were included in the list of Deliverables for the 2nd BRF.

Since its inception, BRNN has been upholding the spirit of the Silk Road featuring peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit with policy coordination, connectivity of infrastructure, unimpeded trade, financial integration and closer people-to-people ties as its main goals. So far, BRNN has successfully reached a number of milestones as follows: 1) launching the multilingual BRNN website and BRNN mobile application platform; 2) carrying out related activities of various forms, such as a BRNN media workshop, forums, meetings and joint interviews; 3) launching the Silk Road Global News Awards; 4) signing an MoU to promote news cooperation and collaboration among BRNN members; 5) launching a news aggregation and distribution service; and, 6) publishing an open letter titled “Together We Fight the War of Pandemic, Together We Build the Silk Road of Health” in six languages, which was delivered to all of the news network’s members whilst the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging.