Education and media experts from China and abroad gathered in Beijing on Saturday and urged countries to cooperate on how to use media carriers like TV to improve education and communication worldwide.

At the two-day workshop on educational broadcasting, Wang Dengfeng, director of the China Ministry of Education's division of language application, said, "Educational broadcasting plays an important role in passing on traditional values and bridging different cultures in today's world of globalization."

Otto Evjenth, chairman of the Global Media Cooperation and Development (GMCD) commission, held a similar opinion.

"Education, as a very important part of the Millenium Development Goal of the United Nations, should be further developed with the help of media broadcasting," Evjenth said, noting that technology alone wouldn't do the job.

"We should establish a global cooperative mechanism and jointly build up our capacity. The GMCD members now cover about 45 percent of the world's TV audience," he added.

China has established cooperative relations with 184 countries and regions worldwide in the education sector, according to the Ministry of Education.

Statistics show that more than 870,000 students from 190 countries and regions have come to study in China, with another 30 million people worldwide learning Chinese language by different means.

The two-day workshop, as the first one of its kind in China, attracted experts from China, United States, Canada, France, Norway, Swiss, India, Malaysia and Mauritius.

(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2008)