Wei Shu: Enhancing Mainstream Media's International Communication Capabilities and Empowering the Expression of China’s New Era Stories with New Technologies
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Telling stories is the best way of international communication." The "Proposals" of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee [1] stated the need to "strengthen the international communication capacity of mainstream media, comprehensively enhance international discourse power, tell China’s story well, and present an image of China that is credible, lovable, and respectable." Technological innovation is a vital force for deepening the systemic reform of mainstream media and strengthening the construction of international communication capacity. Currently, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating its evolution, profoundly reshaping the global public opinion ecosystem and media landscape. To deeply study and comprehend the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speeches and the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, we must actively adapt to the trends of new technological development. We must rely on technological innovation to drive mainstream media in achieving transformative leaps, and empower mainstream media with new technologies to strengthen international communication capacity. This will allow us to more proactively promote China’s propositions, spread Chinese culture, and display China’s image, telling the story of China in the New Era in a truthful, multi-dimensional, and comprehensive manner.
Mainstream media serves as an important platform for studying, publicizing, and implementing the Party's innovative theories, playing an irreplaceable role in propagating the Party’s line, principles, and policies. In today's world, changes unseen in a century [2] are accelerating, and international competition is becoming more complex and intense; as our country increasingly moves toward the center of the world stage, exchanges and mutual learning between different civilizations continue to deepen, while simultaneously facing more frequent cultural collisions. Within this broad context, it has become a vital task for mainstream media to comprehensively enhance international discourse power, tell China’s story well, more effectively publicize the Party’s innovative theories to the international community, and promote the accelerated construction of China’s independent knowledge system, discourse system, and narrative system. Under the contemporary conditions where global digital transformation is accelerating, the rapid development of new technologies—represented by Artificial Intelligence—provides technical support for strengthening the international communication capacity of mainstream media. This helps to better present a credible, lovable, and respectable image of China. To this end, mainstream media must actively embrace and apply new technologies, expand application scenarios, enrich working methods, and continuously improve the effectiveness of all-media communication.
Optimize content production and expand communication channels. In the digital age, giving full play to the professional and authoritative advantages of mainstream media in content production, and actively utilizing new technologies to optimize content production, perfect the communication layout, and expand distribution channels, is an important path to improving the guiding capacity of mainstream public opinion. No matter how technology advances or how media forms evolve, high-quality content remains the "ballast stone" [3]. In international communication, we must base ourselves on the practice of Chinese-path modernization and fine traditional Chinese culture; we must focus on promoting the building of a community with a shared future for humanity. Our focus should center on telling the story of Chinese principles and concepts well, explaining Chinese practice through Chinese theory, and sublimating Chinese theory through Chinese practice. At the same time, it should be recognized that the widespread application of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, can significantly improve content production efficiency through intelligent editing, big-data topic analysis, and automated clip generation. It can also cover more audiences through social platforms, cross-screen linkage, and media convergence, driving high-quality content to shift from one-way publishing to omni-dimensional, interactive, and efficient three-dimensional communication. To this end, mainstream media should make good use of new technologies to create internationally leading content generation models, develop a matrix of diverse communication products, and make content creation more efficient, diverse, and accessible to readers. We should actively expand overseas communication channels, establish intelligent communication hubs in important regional centers, build overseas localized communication partner networks, and construct "cloud-based + localized" communication nodes. We must support the international development of social media platforms, gather voices that understand and are friendly toward China, and actively build platforms for cultural and people-to-people exchanges. We should deepen innovation in communication concepts, create open and inclusive narrative spaces, and promote the transformation of international communication from flat to three-dimensional, and from one-way to interactive.
Improve the Pertinence and Precision of Communication. With the rapid development of new technologies, the profound transformation of the media landscape, and the increasing segmentation of audience demands, the importance of precision communication has grown. By profoundly grasping the laws of network communication, deeply analyzing the information-reception habits of audiences, and utilizing new technologies to strengthen customized production and segmented communication, we can continuously improve the pertinence and precision of communication and enhance the reach and influence of content. For example, by using big data analysis to strengthen the perception of public opinion trends, we can accurately grasp the cognitive habits and emotional tendencies of audiences in different regions and perceive international focal points in real-time, thereby better achieving precision content delivery. Utilizing new technologies to assist in strengthening regional and national studies, understanding the interests and concerns of audiences in different countries and regions, and building intelligent communication platforms will help enhance user stickiness. Using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies to create "cloud" spaces and applying AI to strengthen intelligent recommendations can achieve multi-language automatic generation and precision distribution. To this end, we must strengthen the development and utilization of data resources, performing well in the collection and labeling of mainstream media content data, user data, and public data to provide data support for the precise customization and personalized delivery of communication content. We can also generate matching text, images, audio, and video materials based on audience characteristics for different cultural backgrounds and communication scenarios, using diverse media products to attract more audiences and enhance the affinity of our communication. For instance, developing interactive games, digital collectibles, and other new types of products targeting "Generation Z" audiences can satisfy their personalized needs.
Firmly Guard the Bottom Line of Security. While new technologies enhance the communication and guiding power of mainstream media and drive systemic reform, they inevitably bring certain challenges—such as information distortion, algorithmic bias, and threats to data security. To this end, we must establish and perfect management architectures, work processes, and operating mechanisms that adapt to the laws of all-media development and facilitate the use of new technologies. We must coordinately promote technological application, content innovation, network construction, evaluation reform, and conceptual upgrades to truly achieve integrated content production and integrated technical support. This ensures that while we forge powerful communication capabilities with strong technological power, we also effectively prevent technological risks. Faced with the "cacophony of voices" in international communication, mainstream media must take a clear-cut stand against the abuse of technology. We should proactively refute false information accompanying the application of new technologies in the international public opinion arena and resist phenomena such as cultural fragmentation, superficiality, and excessive entertainment. Through systemic reform and reshaping, we will make global omni-media communication bigger and stronger. At the same time, we must guide media workers to carry forward a fine style of work, conduct in-depth interviews and investigations, and truly enter the daily work, life, and inner worlds of the masses, as well as the broad spaces of the international community. We must draw vivid materials from practice, resolutely maintaining news authenticity and media credibility with truthful and vivid reporting, and sounding the "good voice of China" [4] in the international community.
(The author is a specially invited researcher at the Beijing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era Research Center.) Source: People's Daily (February 25, 2026) Editor: Huihui