The creation of the International Chinese Media Alliance was announced on the closing day of the Fifth International Chinese Media Forum on September 20 in Shanghai. Chinese language media around the globe have been challenged since the second half of 2008, which is a general trend that remains unchanged. Other than a few newspapers that were hit hard by the financial crisis, nearly all Chinese language media are still running. Internet based Chinese language websites actually had a 30% traffic increase.

China News Services took the initiative to call for the creation of the Alliance. The preparatory work started two years ago and received 116 agreement letters from various countries.

Source: Xinhua, September 20, 2009.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/20/content_12084814.htm

Minister of Culture Cai Wu said on September 14th that the Ministry is actively coming up with policies to stimulate the development of the culture industry. The primary efforts are focused on these aspects: (1) improving resource integration to speed up establishing leading “culture enterprises"; (2) encouraging private capital to enter the area of the culture industry; (3) establishing large scale model concentrated culture bases; (4) improving technology-oriented creativity; (5) following the “Go Out” strategy and internationalizing the culture market; (6) building corresponding financial and human resource systems.

Source: Xinhua, September 14, 2009.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/14/content_12052037.htm

As an important component of the nation’s softpower, the Chinese think tank is striving to learn from the Western “think tank” model to increase China’s ability to deal with various challenges. One example is the formation of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE) in March and its 2009 Global Think Tank Summit in July.

Composed of mostly active and retired high ranking officials, CCIEE is trying to build its own funding sources so as to maintain independence. 

The statistics show China has 2,500 research institutes that have policy study as their core research topic, out of which, 2,000 provide services to the government directly or indirectly. Most of the think tanks are owned by the government with a small number belonging to universities or independent entities.

Source: Xinhua, September 20, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/20/content_12084960.htm

Qiu Shi Journal published its 18th issue on September 16, 2009. It carried an article on socialism titled “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Is the Unity of Socialism and Patriotism.” The article reaffirmed the ideology that only socialism can save China. It also stated that "in facing new opportunities and challenges, China must reshape the nation’s spirit using the unity of socialism and patriotism."

Source: Xinhua, September 15, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/15/content_12057134.htm