Spotlight: China-Mongolia media forum highlights communication, exchange for mutual understanding

Participants in the seventh Chinese and Mongolian media forum Saturday urged news media from both countries to do more to contribute to building trust between public of the two neighboring countries.

At the one-day annual forum held in Chinggis City, capital of east Mongolia's Khentii province, Tsogtbaatar Damdin, member of the Mongolian parliament, said relations between Mongolia and China experienced ups and downs since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in as early as 1949.

Tsogtbaatar serves as a foreign policy advisor to Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.

Over the past two decades, bilateral relations have started to develop smoothly, Tsogtbaatar said.

Media organizations should cherish this progress and shoulder greater responsibility to advance the friendly relations between the two countries, he noted.

Also speaking at the forum, Luo Haiyan, deputy editor-in-chief of the "Outlook Weekly" magazine of Xinhua, recalled that China and Mongolia have built a comprehensive strategic partnership that goes beyond political cooperation, and that covers economy, culture, science, technology and education as well.

Media organizations from both countries should cooperate and exchange information, and play an important role in boosting economic and trade cooperations between the two countries, Luo said.

Narantuya Dangaa, vice director of the Mongolian news portal "news.mn" echoed these points of view, saying that political and economic relations between the two countries have developed fast, and urging strengthening of mutual understanding between the Mongolian and Chinese peoples.

China-related coverage in Mongolia was somehow one-sided in the past and this is slowly changing now, said Tsogzayabaatar Banzragch, head of the Department of News Analysis of the Mongolian newspaper "National News".

Some of the Mongolian tabloids and online news sites publish false and biased news stories targeting China, Munkhtuul Banzragch, editor of the Mongolian state-run news agency "Montsame" said.

Such stories are directly translated into Mongolian from Western sources without verifying the accuracy and mislead the readers who take them seriously, Banzragch said.

She called on Mongolian media organizations to tell more China-related stories and to use more Chinese sources instead of following the second-hand information from other countries.

There is a big gap between the real situations and the two countries' mutual perceptions, and media organizations from both countries are responsible for bridging this gap, said Enkhtaivan Erdenesuvd, a Mongolian journalist who is a long-time observer of the Mongolian and Chinese media reports.

Noting that economic relations between the two countries are deepening, Erdenesuvd said, more Mongolians, including journalists, are now going to China to meet the Chinese people and witness China's economic development.

Therefore, the mutual perceptions are slowly changing, she said.

The seventh China-Mongolia press forum this year is also part of the "Feel China" project, which is held under the framework of a China-Mongolia cultural cooperation agreement signed between the governments of the two countries.

The "Feel China" project is co-sponsored by China's State Council Information Office, the government of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Chinese Embassy to Mongolia and Mongolia's Ministry of Culture to help Mongolians better understand its southern neighbor. Endi