On December 23, 2020, China Forum held a seminar titled “Effective Approaches to Voicing China’s Views on Foreign Media,” which was chaired by HAN Hua, Member of the Executive Committee of China Forum, and attended by leading scholars and media experts including ZHANG Lirong, Secretary-General of China Forum, ZHOU Bo, Fellow at CISS and China Forum Expert, DING Yifan, Vice Chairman of the China Society of World Economics and China Forum Expert, Harvey Dzodin, former Vice President of ABC Television and Senior Advisor to the Center for National Image of Tsinghua University, and Jake Haselkorn, Consultant to CCTV and China Daily and former Beijing Bureau Chief for ABC News. 

The seminar explored issues on journalistic standards of foreign media, professional requirements of mainstream outlets overseas, effective approaches to voicing China’s opinions with stronger impact, and deficiencies in current writings.

The world today is more eager than ever to hear China’s voice, said ZHOU Bo. The key is to find out what China wants to tell and what the world wants to know, and always write in a fact-based, objective, logical, precise and inspiration-provoking way.

DING Yifan noted that the different narrative styles have posed difficulties for foreign readers in understanding the nuances in articles written by Chinese authors, which calls for a more story-based, analytical approach to narration, with good humor, that answers the need of their target audience. 

As suggested by the foreign consultants, the secret to successful storytelling in non-native speaking countries is to support one’s ideas with facts in a logical, concise, human, understandable and engaging way, not complex grammar or ornate wordings.