Zhang Qian

    zhqcindy@163.com

    THE Southern Finance Omnimedia Corp. (SFC), the country’s first omnimedia group, was officially inaugurated in Guangzhou on Thursday, aiming to become a powerful international leader of business report and domestic financial information services as well as a new engine of the modern cultural industry.

    At the inauguration ceremony, Shen Haixiong, head of the provincial publicity department, urged the SFC to become a pioneer in providing guidance concerning China’s economic trends within three to five years, shoulder the national mission to safeguard the safety of China’s financial information, and become a powerful global competitor complimenting China as the world’s second-largest economy.

    The SFC will give priority to media, data and trade, and will strive to accomplish media convergence and transformation to become a professional financial omnimedia and comprehensive financial information service group within three years, which is influential and publicly trusted not only in China but the world.

    The group combines the financial and operating departments of the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Media Group and Guangdong Radio and Television Station.

    Its establishment is an implementation of President Xi Jinping’s urging for a convergent media group that can provide safe and useful information on finance as well as support the country’s general development with solid resources and statistics.

    It is also a breakthrough in Guangdong’s drive to deepen its all-around reform and carry out the innovation-driven development strategy.

    Supporting traditional and new media convergence is high on the agenda of China’s leadership. In August 2014, the central leading group for deepening overall reform headed by Xi adopted a guideline establishing media convergence as a national strategy.

    The SFC will use all technologies and formats in news production, such as newspapers, TV and radio channels, websites, apps and social media, making their services more interactive and allowing for more user-generated content.

    It sees its future as having influence around the world like the world’s top mainstream finance media, so that China’s ideas and voices may be more widely heard.