Viewpoints
The Mission and Wisdom of the Press Spokesperson
Zhao Qizheng · 1 ·
The importance of the press spokesperson system in dealing with major events of public crises has been widely studied. With the development of China’s reform and opening up, the system of spokesperson and press conference has gone through a process of being taken as only pilot projects to being widely promoted, and from being isolated cases to becoming universal in China, with huge progress having been made. However, at the same time, we must also realize that there is still a big room for improvement on the capability-building in response to public crises and dealing with critical issues, as well as on the training of spokespersons in China.
Special Topic
Public diplomacy and spokesperson system
China’s “Chief Press Officer” Mr. Zhao Qizheng and the Development of China’s Press Spokesperson System
Zhong Xin & Zhang Yinuo · 9 ·
The breakout of SARS in 2003 brought a severe test to the Chinese government, and it marked the beginning of the building of China’s press spokesperson system. Mr. Zhao Qizheng has made an indelible contribution to the development of China’s news release and press spokesperson system. And his experience and ideas are of great guiding significance to us as the COVID-19 is now raging around the world. First of all，spokespersons bear the dual responsibility of “communicating with the public at home and explaining China to the outside world”; secondly, spokespersons should always stand firm and clarify where there is distorted information and misunderstanding；and finally，they should constantly enhance their capabilities on both “maintaining their position and being reasonable”.
China’s News Release System Has Developed along with the Reform and Opening up
Cheng Manli · 16 ·
Since the founding of the PRC, China’s news release system has gone through a long development process. With the reform and opening up, the news release system has played an important role in promoting the openness of governmental affairs and improving governance. Meanwhile, the Chinese society and media are transforming. On the one hand, the changes of people’s ideas, expression of diversified opinions, interweaving of interests and presentation of different demands in the social transformation period have all made the realm of public opinion unprecedentedly complicated; on the other hand, social media’s emergence and involvement of netizens have greatly shortened the formation process of public opinions. All these have made the government’s news release management agencies confront a lot of challenges. Changes in the new era call on us to improve the news release mechanism with innovation, expand news release channels, and enrich the content, so as to improve the communication, guiding role, influence and the credibility of news release.
The “Eight Principles” and “Three Methods” in Responding to Public Opinions
Lu Dapeng · 27 ·
The increasingly open and transparent public opinion environment has put forward higher requirements on the government and enterprises’ spokesperson system and the work in response to public opinion. In its practice, the Sinopec Group has developed “eight principles” and “three methods” relating to the grading, classifying and responding to public opinion in an effect to meet public opinion challenges, which have effectively improved the external public opinion environment of the enterprise and reshaped its brand image.
The Achievements of China’s Spokesperson System and Its New Reform Tasks
Zhao Shiren · 37 ·
While COVID-19 is raging around the world, and all countries are working hard to respond, it is an appropriate time for us to make review, self-criticism as well as rechecking of the spokesperson and news release system in China. Based on the author’s theoretical research and practical experience of public diplomacy and working experience in the Spokesperson’s Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this paper summarizes the overall development of China’s spokesperson system, points out the direction of our future work and puts forward suggestions for strengthening and enhancement from six aspects, which include the adjustment of the form of press conference, the professionalization of spokespersons, securing of the “green pass” of information, capacity training and quality improvement of spokespersons, team building and mechanism guarantee, so as to jointly promote spokespersons development and news release in the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The Application of Short Videos in News Release during Emergent Public Crises in Post-COVID-19 Epidemic
Yang Yi & Guo Fuqiang · 43 ·
The raging COVID-19 has not only been a threat to human health, but also created the “virus” of distrust, which makes it very important to rebuild trust in the post-epidemic era. News release, as an important part of trust-rebuilding, has not played its sufficiently effective role in response to public emergency crises, especially in dealing with the challenges brought by the new media’s environment with short videos as the dominant form. However, short videos have also brought new opportunities for the development of news release. News release can take short videos as a breakthrough to strengthen its complementarity on application strategy, empathy on communication strategy as well as the comprehensiveness of news spokespersons’ capability, so as to optimize the news release system and its communication effect.
Public Diplomacy and the Spokesperson System
Mi Guanghong · 48 ·
The development of China’s spokesperson system has experienced a process from being only pilot projects to being widely promoted and from being individual cases to becoming universal. Nowadays, with the expansion of public knowledge, wider room for public expression, the strengthening of public supervision, increasing opportunities of public participation，as well as more frequent public consultation in social life，news and public information have become interdependent with social development. It is thus imperative to improve the capabilities of spokespersons. More attention should be paid to news release, media interview, public opinion guidance, information management during crises and other related work. Withthe enhancement of China’s comprehensive national strength and influence in the world community, the amount of China’s daily news release both at home and abroad has gradually increased, the ways and means become more diversified, while the spokesperson and news release mechanism has also demonstrated maturity.
