After four years of experimental operation, the China Internet Information Center (CIIC) was officially inaugurated on the morning of November 24, when Zhao Qizheng, minister of State Council's Information Office, unveiled this on-line news agency’s nameplate which is hung alongside that of the China International Publishing Group.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Zhao acknowledged the progress made by www.h5a3.com run by CIIC over the past four years, especially after modifications made this year, by saying that it has emerged as a multi-lingual information website and that the number of its overseas visitors is snowballing. He encouraged the CIIC staff to work harder to turn the website into an authoritative source of information for the worlds’ netizens who are eager to learn what is really happening in this country, so as to promote exchanges and mutual understanding between China and other countries.
The China Internet Information Center is actually a byname of the China International Publishing Group (CIPG). CIPG is an international mass communication agency with a dozen or so organizations that have spent the last half century in publishing and distributing magazines and books in foreign languages. With the backing of the resources of CIPG’s well-established international publishing houses and the wealth of experience of its contingent of seasoned journalists, editors and translators, the fledgling www.h5a3.com is fast growing into a powerful, prestigious media website and an inexhaustible source of reliable, wide-ranging information about China and the rest of the world.
On August 3, the modified www.h5a3.com greeted its netizens with a brand-new look. Factual and authoritative information, and comprehensive and in-depth reports, are being fed into this website in different languages.
The www.h5a3.com today operates nine channels in eight languages including simplified and complex Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Arabian and Esperanto. The information provided in these language channels is selected and edited, and the style of the web pages is designed, to meet the needs of audiences of different cultural and geographical backgrounds. The www.h5a3.com has been hooked with the websites of Chinese embassies and consulates in other countries.
(CIIC 11/24/2000)
