Starting from Yunnan, gathering the power of media and playing a strong voice of cooperation, we will surely compose a more moving chapter of the times for the high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road".

Photos by Yunnan.com reporters Qi Junjun, Zhang Cheng and Xia Xintong

Ding Tie, special commentator of Caiyun Online Review

On the morning of September 16, the 2025 Belt and Road Media Cooperation Forum, co-sponsored by the People's Daily, the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Yunnan Provincial People's Government, opened in Kunming, Yunnan. Visitors from all over the world gathered in Spring City to discuss cooperation plans and draw a development blueprint, which demonstrated the important role of media in promoting connectivity and enhancing understanding and mutual trust.

The media is a window to showcase development results and a link to promote practical cooperation. The theme of this forum is "Sharing Media Responsibility and Promoting Mutual Learning among Civilizations." In addition to the main forum, there are also sub-forums and activities such as the Belt and Road Media Cooperation Dialogue, the 2025 Belt and Road Regional Cooperation Forum, the 11th ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea (10 3) Media Cooperation Seminar, and the 2025 Silk Road Cultural Tourism Development Forum. Guests attending the meeting will have dialogues and exchanges focusing on leveraging the role of media to create a good international public opinion atmosphere for the joint construction of the “Belt and Road”, and strive to gather greater strength to jointly promote the high-quality development of the “Belt and Road”. The forum’s choice of Yunnan is not only a full recognition of its location advantages, but also a deep expectation of its unique role in the joint construction of the “Belt and Road”.

The "Zheng He" train of the China-Laos Railway started from Kunming, Yunnan. China's Yunnan Province cooperated with Indonesia's Bali Province to carry out an organic rice planting project to benefit local farmers. Yunnan's French son-in-law Vincent and his wife opened a restaurant by the green lake in Kunming. After the strong earthquake in Myanmar, the Chinese Yunnan rescue team searched for and rescued survivors. At the opening ceremony of the forum, the Secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee showed four sets of photos focusing on win-win cooperation, benefiting the people, understanding each other, and helping each other, making the high-quality Belt and Road Initiative more tangible and tangible. The narrative of each set of photos is a vivid footnote of the media’s role as the “megaphone” of public opinion. The joint construction of the "Belt and Road" is not a solo, but a chorus; telling the story of the "Belt and Road" well will make the road to win-win cooperation wider and wider, calling for more media power.

The holding of the Belt and Road Media Cooperation Forum provides a high-end platform for dialogue and exchanges between media from various countries, which is conducive to enhancing understanding and building consensus. From the southwest border to the frontier of opening up, Yunnan is becoming an important window to tell the story of the “One Belt, One Road” with its geographical location spanning mountains and seas, its cultural genes of tolerance and symbiosis, and its hub function of connecting the inside and outside. From the "Transnational Spring Festival Gala" to the "China-Myanmar Cultural Exchange Week", from joint university training to friendly people-to-people exchanges, Yunnan has made the "Belt and Road" story both thick and warm through heart-to-heart connections. It is expected that the media, as a link between civilizations, will break through geographical restrictions, dig out more vivid stories, present vivid practices from a true, three-dimensional and comprehensive perspective, and jointly sing the harmony of high-quality development of the "Belt and Road".

If content is the "ballast stone" and the platform is the "accelerator," then empathy is the "glue." High-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road" not only points to development and common prosperity, but also points to people-to-people bonds. Yunnan's cultural characteristics of multi-ethnic symbiosis and co-prosperity and its long-standing cultural exchanges with neighboring countries provide natural advantages for promoting people-to-people connectivity. We look forward to taking the forum as an opportunity to promote more and more media across national borders to demonstrate respect and tolerance between different cultures, friendly exchanges between different ethnic groups, and mutual benefit and win-win results between different countries. This will make the story of the “Belt and Road” more humane and more likely to resonate, and create a lasting and in-depth atmosphere of good international public opinion for the joint construction of the “Belt and Road”.

Starting from Yunnan, gathering the power of media and playing a strong voice of cooperation, we will surely compose a more moving chapter of the times for the high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road".