The Director of the Chinese State Council of Information (SCIO), Mr Jiang Weiqiang has called on journalists in developing countries, to deepen their world view through frequent interactions with each other and not through the lenses of the Western Media.
He said by doing so, they would understand why China was not shy to discuss its human right records as wrongly portrayed by some media houses in the West.
Mr Jiang noted that since 1991, SCIO has been coming out with the official stance on human right issues and participated in many international forums on human rights to do so.
He was speaking at the formal opening of the a two- week seminar for 46 media personnel, drawn mainly from English speaking African countries at Beijing, the Chinese capital, as a prelude to the Sino-African diplomatic meeting scheduled for Egypt this year.
Mr Jiang said in the 1970s, about 50 million of the Chinese population were living below the poverty line and to the government, the most important human rights issue was how to provide food, shelter and better standards of living for such a huge population.
He said the achievements of China today is there for everybody to observe.
The director said the Sino-African relationship, would offer the participants the opportunity to appreciate why China continue to describe itself as a developing country despite its economic achievements.
As part of the seminar, the participants would meet their Chinese counterparts in a Sino-African media forum to discuss how far the two had done in the presentation of African and Chinese issues from the views of Africa and China.
The participants would also have the opportunity to interact with Chinese government officials, provincial heads and management personnel of some Chinese companies.