Activity Type: Media Cooperation Agreement

Tourism Australia, the Australian government’s international tourism promotion agency, and China Media Group (中国中央广播电视总台, CMG) signed a two-year Memorandum of Understanding in July 2025 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, witnessed by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The agreement, formalized by Tourism Australia’s Robin Mack and CMG President Shen Haixiong (慎海雄), established a framework for co-creating tourism content across CMG’s television, radio, digital, and social media platforms. The partnership aimed to enhance Australia’s brand recognition in China through culturally attuned storytelling, featuring Australia’s landscapes, multicultural communities, and lifestyle. The collaboration supported Tourism Australia’s “Come and Say G’day” campaign launch in China that August, during a period when Chinese visitor numbers reached 860,000 annually, generating $9.2 billion in tourism expenditure with 26 percent year-on-year growth.

China Daily (中国日报) and Fairfax Media signed a content distribution agreement in May 2016 to launch “China Watch” in Australia, marking China Daily’s entry into the Australian market. The agreement, announced at a ceremony attended by Liu Qibao (刘奇葆), head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department, established monthly publication of an eight-page English-language “China Watch” supplement in Fairfax Media’s Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and Financial Review newspapers. China Daily editor-in-chief Zhou Shuchun (周树春) described the partnership as extending China Daily’s influence across Oceania through Fairfax’s network of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand. “China Watch,” a multilingual China Daily publication reaching over 50 million readers globally, was already distributed with major newspapers including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph, Le Figaro, and others across multiple countries. Announcing the deal, China Daily quoted Tim Dwyer, an associate professor at the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, as saying: “The inclusion of China Watch publication is a really welcome development in the Australian media landscape. It introduces news diversity to Australian media audiences.” Published by China’s propaganda department (State Council information Office), China Daily is explicitly described in Party documents as a vehicle for “external propaganda” and “telling China’s story well.”