About China Intercontinental Communication Center

China Intercontinental Communication Center

The China Intercontinental Communication Center (CICC) is a Beijing-based Chinese state media organisation that presents China to foreign audiences through film, television, books, cultural exchange and online media. Set up in Beijing in December 1993, it describes itself as a comprehensive international cultural communication agency, with four export-oriented centres covering film and television, books, cultural exchange and networks, and the stated aim of "letting the world understand China and letting China understand the world". It has established cooperative relationships with more than 40 television organisations in over 20 countries and with more than 30 publishing houses in 19 countries and regions, and it has brought Chinese films, television programmes and books to more than 200 countries and regions. Reference works describe it as a state-owned entity operated by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, and its best-documented work internationally is its documentary co-productions with foreign broadcasters such as Discovery and National Geographic.

Names and identity

The organisation is known by several names, which reflect its combined role as a communication centre and a publisher. In Chinese it is Wuzhou Communication Center (五洲传播中心), and its alternate English names include the China International Communication Center, China Intercontinental Press or China International Press (五洲传播出版社) and China Intercontinental Press Media (五洲传播出版传媒). The pairing of "center" and "press" in its own descriptions — it styles itself the China Intercontinental Communication Center (China Intercontinental Press) — captures the dual business: a cultural communication agency that also publishes. Its website is cicc.org.cn.

The multiplicity of names has practical consequences for anyone tracing its work. Its documentary partnerships have been announced under the name China Intercontinental Communication Centre, its publishing is conducted as China Intercontinental Press, and the China Media Project's investigation of its co-productions noted that a name it uses interchangeably, China International Communication Center, appeared as the majority shareholder of a British production company involved in one of its documentary projects.

Founding in December 1993 and its stated aim

The Center was set up in Beijing in December 1993. Its own description of its purpose is reciprocal: "With helping the world to understand China, and helping China to understand the world as its goal, the Center/Press works to introduce to the rest of the world the basics of Chinese history, politics, economics, science and technology, education, culture, and the lives of the Chinese people, and also to display the latest progress China has made in social and economic development during the ongoing reform and opening-up." Wikipedia's summary of its founding gives the same mission in shorter form: it was founded in 1993 with the stated aim of "letting the world understand China and letting China understand the world".

The founding date places CICC in the period after the State Council Information Office was established in January 1991 to explain China to foreign countries — the institutional setting, described below, within which the Center has operated.

State affiliation

CICC is a Chinese state media entity. Reference summaries describe it as operated by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. The China Media Project, which investigated the organisation in depth in 2023, reported that CICC is housed directly under the Information Office of China's State Council — the State Council Information Office, which is twinned with the Party's Central Propaganda Department — and that its physical offices are at the Central Propaganda Department's office in central Beijing. According to the same investigation, the company listing for CICC's publishing and media company shows it is fully held by China's State Council, and its chief executive Dong Qing is a veteran official of the Central Propaganda Department who previously served as chief editor of China Culture Online.

Despite that direct association, the China Media Project noted, CICC has presented itself globally as a media group ready to do business, providing foreign outlets with film and documentary content about China and offering access to China's film and television market. That combination — a state communication mandate executed through commercial-looking partnerships — is the defining feature of the organisation's international work.

The four centres

CICC describes itself as "a comprehensive international cultural communication agency complete with four export-oriented communication centers, including the Film and TV Center, the Book Center, the Cultural Exchange Center and the Network Center". The four-part structure maps onto its output: documentary and television production and co-production through the Film and TV Center; books through the Book Center and the China Intercontinental Press imprint; events and exchanges through the Cultural Exchange Center; and websites and online publications through the Network Center.

The structure makes CICC different from a news agency. It does not operate a daily news wire; it produces and places cultural products — programmes, books, exhibitions and websites — designed to carry accounts of China into foreign markets over long periods, through partners in those markets.

Partnership network and distribution

By its own account, the Center/Press "has established cooperative relationships with 40-plus TV organizations in more than 20 countries, and with over 30 publishing houses in 19 countries and regions around the world. It has also carried out cultural activities in some 40 countries and regions. It has also succeeded in bringing Chinese movies and TV plays as well as books to more than 200 countries and regions."

Those figures describe a distribution strategy based on partnership rather than ownership. CICC does not run foreign television channels or bookshops; it works through established broadcasters and publishers in each market, which give its films, programmes and books local distribution and local credibility. The co-productions described below, with Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific and National Geographic, are the best-documented examples of that model at work.

Documentary co-production as a principal activity

One of CICC's principal activities is co-producing documentaries and television shows with foreign broadcasters, including in Western and other Asian countries. Such productions have been described by outside analysts as often containing Chinese state messaging. The model typically pairs CICC's access, funding and subject matter in China with a foreign partner's production skills, brand and distribution.

The clearest documented case is its relationship with Discovery. In March 2015 Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific signed a three-year content deal with the China Intercontinental Communication Centre. A product of that deal was "China: Time of Xi", a documentary series presenting China under President Xi Jinping, hosted by international personalities including the American architect Danny Forster and the Australian biomedical engineer Jordan Nguyen, produced for Discovery by the British company Meridian Line Films and aired by the Discovery Channel in 2017, on the eve of the Chinese Communist Party's Nineteenth National Congress, in 37 countries and regions across Asia, reaching tens of millions of viewers. The China Media Project's later investigation examined the corporate links between Meridian Line Films and CICC, reporting that CICC's deputy director Jing Shuiqing and its creative director Wang Yuanyuan were listed as directors of the British company, and that 85 per cent of its shares were held by a company identified as China International Communication Center Ltd.

The National Geographic partnership

CICC's partnership with National Geographic produced a series of China documentaries over several years. The two had previously collaborated on "China From Above" in 2015, which gave a panoramic view of China from the sky, and "China Revealed" in 2016, which covered China's ancient history, natural scenery and modern innovations along with snapshots of everyday life. In October 2018 the China Intercontinental Communication Centre announced a further co-production with National Geographic, "Extreme China", a documentary series exploring China's extreme natural landscapes through National Geographic explorer and photographer Ben Horton, who teamed up with leading Chinese explorers. Each episode featured a different site — the Siguniang icefall, the Hainan sea and the Hanzhong sinkholes — combining ice climbing, free diving and caving with the lives of the local communities who live in those landscapes. University professor and alpinist Liu Yong guided the Siguniang journey among the Jiarong Tibetan people, and underwater photographer and conservationist Doudou led the Hainan filming.

A second season of "Extreme China" was announced in December at the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival. Announcing it, National Geographic's senior vice president of global programs, Jules Oldroyd, said the cooperation with CICC had produced more than 70 hours of China-themed documentaries co-produced so far, and CICC's vice president Jing Shuiqing described the series as an achievement of the ongoing close cooperation between National Geographic and CICC. The partnership is the largest documented example of CICC's co-production strategy with a Western media brand.

The Image Nation Abu Dhabi film fund

CICC's film work extended to financing partnerships. In November 2016 it formed a 300-million-US-dollar fund with Image Nation Abu Dhabi, a leading media and entertainment company in the Arabic-speaking world, to co-fund movies and television productions in Hollywood, the United Arab Emirates and China. Under the agreement the two sides would also invest in a China-focused factual entertainment series to air across the Middle East and North America, and fund a training programme for young Emirati and Chinese film and television executives. The deal, reported by the Financial Times, was noted at the time as another sign of China's increasing interest in filmed entertainment and in partnerships connecting its industry with Hollywood and the Middle East.

Books, publishing and cultural exchange

Through its Book Center and the China Intercontinental Press imprint, CICC publishes books introducing China to foreign readers, working with the more than 30 publishing houses in 19 countries and regions with which it has cooperative relationships. Publishing catalogues of China Intercontinental Press document its output in this field. Its Cultural Exchange Center carries out the cultural activities it has staged in some 40 countries and regions. Books and exchanges are the slower-moving counterparts of its screen work: the same remit — Chinese history, politics, economics, science, culture and society explained for foreign audiences — delivered in print and in person rather than on television.

The organisation's earlier output was, by the account the China Media Project quoted from documentary filmmaker Ming Yu, material "with a strong propaganda tone" that was "incapable of communicating China"; the investigation described CICC's transformation into a commercial enterprise in 2011 as the turning point after which it built its list of international co-production partnerships. That assessment, favourable or not, identifies the strategy that defines the modern CICC: professionally produced, partner-branded content about China, made to the standards of the foreign channels that broadcast it.

Websites and magazines

CICC also operates several websites and publications. Reference listings of its operations include the State Council Information Office website, Humanrights.cn, the website of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, Chinaxinjiang.cn, Tibetol.cn, the China News Release service, and the "City Walk" magazines, published in English as the "That's" magazines. The websites extend the organisation's remit into official information on subjects such as human rights, Xinjiang and Tibet, while the city magazines serve the English-reading audience inside China. Together with its Network Center, they form the online arm of an organisation whose work is otherwise concentrated in film, television and print.

CICC's place in China's external communication

The China Intercontinental Communication Center occupies a specific niche among China's state media organisations. It is not a news agency like Xinhua or China News Service, and it gathers no daily news; it is a producer and broker of cultural content about China for foreign consumption, operating since December 1993 from Beijing under the State Council Information Office and the Central Propaganda Department. Its four centres, its partnerships with more than 40 television organisations and more than 30 publishing houses, its distribution of Chinese films, programmes and books to more than 200 countries and regions, and its documented co-productions with Discovery and National Geographic — more than 70 hours of China-themed documentaries with the latter alone — make it one of the principal instruments through which China has sought, in its own words, to let the world understand China.