The successful advancement of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative requires the support of countries along the routes. To achieve that goal, the media should play a bigger role in letting more people know about the strategic initiative and the benefits it will bring.

Chinese and international delegates to the International Seminar on the Belt and Road Initiative, opened on September 26 in the ancient Chinese capital Xi'an, agreed that media could help eliminate misunderstandings at the grass roots level and therefore lead to consensus at the highest levels.

Since September of 2013, mainstream international media outlets have published more than 10,000 reports in English alone on the Belt and Road, according to a study done by the Center for International Communication Studies of the China International Publishing Group (CIPG).

Such high attention on a single topic is unprecedented in the history of media, said Fang Zhenghui, vice president of CIPG at the seminar.

In another survey conducted by the same agency, people from eight countries, including the United States, Russia, Britain and India, gave 77 points out of 100 for their recognition of the Belt and Road; while 18 countries in the G20 bloc, excluding China, gave 67.6 points for how the Belt and Road could help with peace and development along its routes.

"The figures show that people are paying more attention to the Belt and Road and giving it positive reviews. It's fair to say that the amicable situation can be attributed to the media's extensive, continuous and in-depth coverage of the Belt and Road these years," said Fang.

Dmitry Strovsky, professor of journalism from Ural Federal University in Russia, expressed concerns about the misconceptions between people due to the lack of proper media coverage.

Speaking at the seminar, he said that media coverage about China is quite limited in Russia, and therefore many Russian people are afraid of Chinese, because they do not know about them. This situation may get more intense since Russian media, like their peers in many other countries, tend to be aggressive in their reports about China, he said.

According to Strovsky, very few people in Russia know about China's Belt and Road. Hence, he called for more media coverage and support to help sustain China-Russia relations, which have been in good standing in recent years.

He believed that the situation is also the same when it comes to the relations between China and other countries on the Belt and Road. In other words, although media does not directly participate in the construction of Belt and Road projects, it has the power to make the construction go smoothly.

(China.org.cn September 26, 2016)