Xinhua, Tass presidents discuss media cooperation

China's Xinhua News Agency and Russia's Tass news agency should further expand cooperation to help lift the two countries' comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership of coordination to a higher level, Xinhua President Cai Mingzhao said here Friday.

The visiting Xinhua president made the remarks at a meeting with his Tass counterpart Sergei Mikhailov on the sidelines of the ongoing Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Thanks to joint efforts by the two countries' heads of state, great progress has been made in the development of bilateral relationship, which is now at its best in history, Cai said. The combination of China's "One Belt One Road" initiatives and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union can create a broad cooperation space for the two news agencies, he noted.

With big changes of news media landscape and rapidly growing influence of the Internet, the two sides should continuously strengthen pragmatic cooperation and work together to address the challenges facing news media, he stressed.

For his part, Mikhailov agreed with Cai's views. He said that Tass values its partnership and friendship with Xinhua, and suggested deepening bilateral collaboration in photo, audio and video news services.

The two sides also agreed to strengthen exchanges and cooperation, and work together to make good preparation for the coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China in September to attend the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

Moreover, Cai and Mikhailov agreed that the two agencies will jointly celebrate the 60 anniversary of the establishment of their cooperative relations next year.

They also discussed multilateral media cooperation on platforms like the BRICS bloc, which groups Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Cai said that with the development of global multi-polarization, competition in the international public opinion field is becoming more and more intense, and that the media of BRICS countries should jointly build platforms for high-level dialogues and exchanges in order to address common issues, expand cooperation areas and protect shared interests.

Mikhailov expressed full willingness to actively participate in the construction of such important media cooperation platforms, together with other BRICS partners. Endi