The director of the Government Information Bureau (GCS), Victor Chan, reiterated on the sidelines of Monday’s Macao Global Media Industry Development Conference 2018 that the government respects the freedom of the press.
“We think that the media development should follow its own law and media organization, and media groups should develop in accordance to their own ideas,” said Chan. “But, of course, the government or GCS have the responsibility to promote and assist media development,” he added.
The conference was co-organized by China News Service and Macao Daily News.
According to The Macau Daily Times the participants are mainly from the Chinese press, including Chinese press from 29 countries and regions from North America, Europe, Africa and Oceania.
“We think the media conference is a platform that can push forward media development,” said Chan.
When expressing his opinion about media development, Chan said that the media should expand its own content and information, in order to reach more users and readers.
Chan also said that the “media development is facing new challenges. But I think the most important thing is that this is also an opportunity, with the development of the network of the new media. We can explore more frontiers, and we can reach much a greater audience.”
According to Chan, the purpose of the conference is to “engage media around the world, of course, with close connections to Macau.”
“We sit down together to discuss what we can do in the future, as Macau is the platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries. This gives us very good advantages for our further development even on the media side,” said Chan.
“How Macau media makes good use of this to promote the ideas and services between China and Portuguese-speaking countries is a very important aspect for the further development,” he added.
“This year, we invited some of our colleagues from Portugal, so I think it’s a very important step, we sit down together and discuss what we can do, how we can make good use of this platform to provide services and information as well. This is vital for further development of Macau’s media,” Chan noted.
“For media, nowadays, it’s not only to provide information, I think it’s a combination of providing information news and service as well, and with different media, there are different connections.
For example, there are some media from Portugal, so we can sit down, we can discuss how they can help to provide information to China, or to the customer of China, or to those who need information on the Portuguese-speaking countries. I think they can play a very significant and important role in the future,” said Chan.
He said “Macau was the first in China that was open for trade with the West. Macau will continue to play the role of intermediary between the nation and the outside world. In our efforts to become a world centre of tourism and leisure as well as a services platform for trade cooperation between China and Portuguese speaking-countries, we will do our best to further the exchange and cooperation in the media industry.”
The local media group Macaulink, who provides GCS with the Macauhub service dedicated to the commercial and economic relations between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries, attended the conference where it´s correspondent in Portugal, Paulo Figueiredo made a presentation of the work that has been done in the last 11 years.
