Chinese and ASEAN ministers responsible for information made the announcement after concluding their one-day discussion on Thursday in Nanning, capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. They've signed a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU.

Chen Xi has the story.

Reporter:
According to the MOU, China and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN will expand medium and long-term cooperation in a number of key areas including human resource development, interactive and digital media sector and co-productions.

Qian Xiaoqian, Vice-Minister with the State Council Information Office, hails the signing of the MOU. He calls for China and ASEAN to deal with common challenges with the help of freer information flow.

"In order to adapt to the changes on the international stage and the development of Sino-ASEAN relations, we should further promote the news exchanges and media cooperation between China and ASEAN pragmatically."

Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek, Malaysia's Minister of Information, says the conference is timely in the light of the recent global financial crisis.

He calls for greater regional resilience to tackle the problem, and says speedy exchange of information will allow the two parties to know quickly what actions can be taken accordingly in respective countries.

"In order to do that, we have to cooperate among the people, from the culture, from the people-to-people perspective, which could only be done through the media cooperation, through the dissemination of information."

Lee Boon Yang, Singapore's Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, regards co-production between Chinese and ASEAN media as the most impactful area of cooperation, such as TV content and feature films.

He says Singapore will encourage its TV companies to work with their Chinese counterparts. He hopes they will brainstorm ways to gather ideas, pool together resources and engage in co-productions.

Lee Boon Yang also suggested media have a global vision while co-producing programs.

"The most important challenge is this, you know you want to produce content that will reach out not just to Chinese audience, not just to Singapore audience, but to a global audiences."

Moreover, participants at the conference also agree that the two parties should join hands to adapt to the challenges facing traditional media, and to develop new media technologies cooperatively.

China started its formal dialogue with ASEAN in 1991, and became ASEAN's full dialogue partner in 1996. Both sides have conducted fruitful discussions on various topics, including telecommunications and health.

CX, CRI News.