The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of great transition for both the content and distribution sides of the media industry, and they have faced the challenges well and emerged even stronger, said experts at a forum. The panel discussion, held on Dec 14, focused on the topic “New Normal, New Media”, which closely relates to how the media sector adapted to fit the new environment and shifted its business models for the coming new year. The forum was part of the webinar, Asia: Economic and Business “New Normal” 2022,co-hosted by China Daily Leadership Roundtable and Asian News Network. Experts said that, just as the commercial sectors have been heavily affected by the pandemic, with companies in various industries battling to regain their footing, the media industry has also seen vast and drastic changes on numerous aspects. Sonia Awale, executive editor, Nepali Times, who works as an environmental correspondent in Nepal, covers topics such as air pollution, climate change, development, political and economic injury cases. Many reporters like her have been at the frontlines of the pandemic as covering various stories constantly exposes them to the danger of infections, she said. However, to tackle the situation, back in March 2020 they were among the first groups to receive the right for vaccination in her country. Apart from the trend of having employees work from home, media companies too had to make the transition from print to digital, Awale noted. “The Nepali Times (used to be) a weekly paper,” she mentioned. “But today, we work or we have more or less been trained to work as a web service, given the flow of information we have, especially when we were forced to shut down our print (edition) for nearly a month.” Awale said that their online readers are at least 10 times more than their print readers. "So today, our rivals are not other newspapers but YouTube, TikTok and content generation". D.J. Clark, the multimedia director of China Daily Asia Pacific, talked about the challenges facing his team who work on video content and the changes they madeduring the pandemic. He said that the pandemic in some ways has been beneficial for video content as it leads to more consumption online because of the lockdowns across the world. However, Clark noted the biggest problem has been on the production side as they did half of their content outside Hong Kong, but the travel restrictions means that they cannot easily travel abroad, so they have to produce more content locally. They also had to secure the help of a network of freelancers. “That has been a learning process in terms of creating new workflows with people outside or sending our producers out for long periods,” he said. Pana Janviroj, editor, Asia News Network, highlighted the issue of social media attracting all the advertising money from the legacy media as people are increasingly getting news from digital portals. He said 20-25 percent of news events and conversations occur on social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. But he thinks that the legacy media, which breaks and follows authentic news, are able to innovate and capture the key news items. “You cannot beat free content,”he said, but noted that free content remains inconsistent as it lacks adequate resources. "Our main job is not to follow fake news (on new media). Our job is to do real news and to do things that (are) better for society or whatever," said Janviroj. Janviroj said he hoped innovations taking place in the industry can help journalists to be social influencers and help to empower the newsroom. Rupak Kumar Sen, general manager - international business, Indian Express said, “Like those who say that data is the new oil, I think they are very much right.” He gives the example of the Indian Express newspaper that incorporates big data in its marketing strategy. Even during the pandemic, the newspaper tied up with various financial institutions like banks, which have millions of customers, and offered its web version to their consumers. “That has literally helped us to reach out to as many readers as possible,” said Sen. The pandemic has forced the traditional print media to think differently and to use technology, he said. Muhammad Zubair Ahmed, Diplomatic Correspondent, Pakistan Observer said digitalization is the key word during the pandemic era. Many young journalists possess newer skillsets, newer strategies and fresh ideas, he said. “At the same time, we are also seeing (young journalists) practicing good journalism, ethical journalism,” he said. He said that it may be surprising that in Pakistan, during the emergence of COVID-19 almost every other journalist createdtheir own YouTube channel. China Daily Leadership Roundtable and Asian News Network, an alliance of 23 national media organizations in 20 Asian countries,brought together leading Asian business executives to look at the prospects for 2022 and beyond. The panel on media was hosted by Azam Khan, Anchor, Multimedia Program, China Daily Hong Kong.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world on its head, but the crisis has revealed the adaptability, flexibility and resilience of industries to transform challenges into opportunities. Practitioners from the logistics, tourism, fashion and retail industries opened a dialogue on Tuesday, sharing the “street smarts” that enabled them to survive this fraught time. At the forum “Asia: Economic and Business ‘New Normal’ 2022”, co-hosted by the China Daily Leadership Roundtable and the Asian News Network, an alliance of 23 national media in 20 Asian countries, speakers celebrated the high adaptability shown by industries that are riding out the storm. The COVID-induced disruption to the global supply chain has left an estimated several hundred thousand containers from China en route to the United States and Europe detained for extended periods, according to Ken Chung Hung-hing, chairman of the Chamber of Hong Kong Logistics Industry. This has driven up the cost of container shipping 10 times, from $2,000 prior to the pandemic to $20,000. As a result, companies have difficulty attracting enough customers for the shipping, he said. There is also an imbalance of need and supply in the trading process, Chung said. The disrupted supply chain renders some natural resources and necessary ingredients in the production or trading process inaccessible, leading to a shortage in the supply of commodities to consumers. Trading protectionism in many economies has compounded the challenges facing the industry, he said. An inspection of the pricing index for container shipping reveals a dramatic increase in the past two years since the pandemic. Some would argue that the increase has allowed shipping companies to reap high profits. But Chung contends that it may not necessarily be the case as large shipping companies have to make risk management assessments in such volatile situations, saying, “They already declared they’d frozen the high price a month or two before, as they had to manage the risks and couldn’t afford to let the price go up to infinity.” Dillip Rajakarier, CEO of Minor Hotels, a Bangkok-based hospitality company that operates 500 hotels worldwide, said that the COVID-19 pandemic has created a tsunami in the global travel industry because of the de facto halt in global tourism. “It’s been very challenging for the industry, due to the travel restrictions and quarantine arrangements imposed by different countries because of COVID-19,” he said. The epidemic has also changed global consumers’ travel habits and preferences as they have focused more on hygiene and health, Rajakarier noted. “Guests are paying more attention to health and wellness (factors) such as boosting immunity. They want to make sure that health and wellness are being taken good care of.” Garment manufacturing is the backbone of Bangladesh’s economy, and small and medium-sized enterprises in the fashion industry have suffered a shocking blow, particularly in sourcing and exporting to some markets, said Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. Against all the odds, Hassan said that fashion sectors in Bangladesh have ventured out of their comfort zone, making immediate adaptations to the sticky patch they found themselves in, including changing tactics in the manufacturing process, going digital and embracing e-commerce, expanding the production of non-cotton and value-added items. The adaptive strategies have seen the fashion sector back on its feet in the past few months, Hassan said. Looking forward to 2022, Rajakarier is optimistic on global tourism, saying, “International traveling will rebound. Traveling will come back quite strongly next year when COVID-19 becomes a flu, due to the pent-up demand, which will gradually ease.” Pindar Wong, blockchain pundit and chairman of internet financial infrastructure consultancy VeriFi (Hong Kong), said that besides affecting consumers’ behavior, the pandemic has altered producers or businesses’ way of operation, forcing them to shift to a more digital-savvy model. Wong said he predicted the recent crypto frenzy amid accelerated digitalization would broaden the business turf for intellectual property practices. “There’re a lot of experiments going on around crypto such as metaverse … but the real reality is that there’s a competition of money,” he noted. “I think what it really does is it’s changing the way we do business with intellectual property.” While he is upbeat about the prospect of the trading industry regaining its vitality in the coming years, Chung takes a cautiously positive outlook on the time needed, saying, “The issues can’t be resolved anytime soon,” as it takes time to let the prices of container shipping cool down and the supply catch up with the demand. “My expectation (for the recovery) is in the second or third quarter of the coming year,” Chung said.

Participants at online roundtable forum also warn to be vigilant of those who would use tool to distort markets Blended finance is an important tool for helping achieve sustainable development goals and driving growth in developing countries, but rules should be strictly followed to avoid market distortions, experts and industry leaders told a roundtable forum on Tuesday. Xavier Michon, deputy executive secretary of United Nations Capital Development Fund, said blended finance is an “absolute necessity” for sustainable development of less-developed countries. Michon made his remarks at the virtual forum, titled “Blended Finance and Regional Development for Developing Countries”. The event was co-organized by China Daily and AvantFaire Investment Management Ltd. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines “blended finance” as “the strategic use of development finance for the mobilization of additional finance towards sustainable development in developing countries”. “Even prior to the COVID-19 crisis, domestic resource mobilization was a tremendous challenge for LDCs, which is why they have relied to a large extent on external finance; namely, development finance, remittances, and investment,” Michon said. “Most importantly, official development assistance alone is simply not enough to finance the SDGs,” or sustainable development goals, Michon said. “We need blended finance because we need to attract robust flows of capital to finance projects that have commercial impact, that have development potential and that lack the kind of profile that would typically attract commercial finance.” Avantfaire founder and CEO Catherine Chen said the reason that blended finance has become popular globally is that it blends the private and public sectors and creates a win-win situation. “Blended finance creates mobility, which means that more private capital participates in the financing of development projects that would not be considered in the past,” she said. “With bigger private capital to participate, there will be a bigger scale of development for those projects. That means that a bigger absolute impact of the society will be created.” Investing in partnership with private entities will bring new investment perspectives and additional business efficiencies to the public entities, while private managers, in turn, will also get experience from their public counterparts on how to add value to the national and international development agenda, such as the Paris Agreement and the SDGs of the United Nations, Chen added. Philipp Farenholtz, investment officer of blended finance department at International Finance Corp, stressed the importance for market players to “play by the same rules”. “There is a lot of potential to distort markets, and we all have to be very careful that we use blended concessional funding in a very reasonable way. Otherwise, some actors may use blended finance to compete, and distort markets,” he warned. He said IFC is leading a working group that focuses on promoting a set of principles on blended concessional finance with the aim to “ensure that the use of blended concessional finance is transparent and in line with these principles to avoid any kind of market distortions”. Citing the organization that he works for, especially how it operates in the private sector, Henry Gonzalez, director of Private Sector Facility at Green Climate Fund, spoke on how the financial mechanism mobilizes capital from the developed world to the developing world as a way of compensating for climate change. He views blended finance as a tool and an opportunity that could bring private and public capital together and have each play the role they should be playing. “Public capital should be open to risks, open to innovation, and open to invest in an earlier stage. And then private capital is there to scale to take it to the other level, to provide a standard,” he said. Paul Horrocks, the OECD’s head of Unit for Private Finance for Sustainable Development, also pointed out that blended finance can help bridge the investment gap for the SDGs if a common framework is completed, as well as offer a way to mobilize the private sector. “A lot of pension holders nowadays want to invest in the SDGs for the long term. For the SDGs, the gaps are significant, and the opportunities are also very big. Blended finance allows private capital to tap into those opportunities in developing countries where future growth and future needs for financing are the most significant,” he added. Horrocks said the biggest obstacle for increasing blended finance activities is the scale of the capital and how to mobilize it well. To tackle this problem and help developing countries transform, several tools may work, which include capital constraints, national regulations, and the use of more-effective guarantees to scale and bring in a large amount of capital, he said. Contact the writers at sally@chinadailyhk.com

新聞稿 即時發佈 2021年12月7日香港：主題為“混合融資與區域發展：對發展中國家的新影響”的專題研討會今日線上舉行，吸引逾120名商界、投資及金融界人士線上參會。 混合融資指戰略性地使用融資所籌集的資金，並協助發展中國家實現可持續發展目標。然而，目前大部分發展中國家缺乏使用混合融資所需的框架。根據報告顯示，就保護和恢復生態系統而言，預計需要投資3000億至4000億美元，但目前只有520 億美元投資用於此專案上。混合融資對可持續發展的影響成為當下值得關注的問題。 本次研討會由中國日報亞洲領袖圓桌論壇與先行投資管理有限公司合辦，邀請聯合國資本發展基金執行副秘書長塞維•米瓊作主旨演講，先行投資管理有限公司創始人兼首席執行官陳欽若、國際金融公司混合融資部投資官菲力浦•法倫霍爾茨、綠色氣候基金私營部門機制總監亨利•岡薩雷斯和經濟合作與發展組織可持續發展私人融資部門負責人保羅•霍羅克斯任討論嘉賓，中國日報亞太分社多媒體總監大衛•克拉克主持，共同探討混合融資如何彌補可持續發展目標的缺口，同時確保投資者獲得良好回報等議題。 塞維•米瓊表示，僅靠官方發展援助根本不足以為可持續發展目標提供資金, 我們還需要混合融資來吸引資本，為具有商業影響和發展潛力的專案提供資金。多年以來，混合融資實際一直在發展融資領域占很大比重。混合融資可能成為發展融資的一個有力手段，它可以為缺乏資本的發展型項目提供資金流。 陳欽若指出，混合融資是由公共或慈善團體進行初始投資、私營企業跟進參與，針對社會或環境發展項目的投資，私營企業同時也會獲得商業利益。混合融資在完成全球使命方面創造出全新的靈活性，提供多元的新途徑，同時實現社會和環境的共同發展。 菲力浦•法倫霍爾茨表示，參與混合融資的人都必須遵守相同規則，這一點十分重要。大家應謹慎對待，合理使用混合融資，否則有人會用其進行競爭，然後扭曲市場。金融機構往往是解決融資問題最有效的途徑，但如果想與其合作，就必須統一激勵措施。同時，金融機構還需嚴格遵守混合融資的原則，以確保不會造成市場扭曲。 亨利•岡薩雷斯認為，混合融資作為一種投資工具和機會，可以真正地將私人資本和公共資本結合起來，並讓它們各自發揮應有作用。因此，公共資本應該對風險開放，對創新開放，對早期投資開放，私人資本的作用則是將其提升到另一個水準並提供投資標準。 保羅•霍羅克斯表示，現在很多拿退休金的人希望長期投資可持續發展目標。可持續發展目標的投資領域缺口很大、機會很多，混合融資允許私人資本在發展中國家利用這些機會，未來這些國家的融資增長和需求十分可觀。 混合融資泛指使用公共或慈善資本吸引私部門投資，利用結構化方法使不同種類的資金共同投資，以達到共同目標，混合融資結構類型甚廣，包含基金、設施及公司等，主要目標均為增加對永續性發展的投資。 有關中國日報 中國日報是中國國家英文日報，全媒體用戶總數超過3.5億，目前全球下載用戶超過3600萬，是我國唯一下載量過千萬的英文新聞用戶端；微博粉絲數超過6170萬；微信訂閱人數達1300萬；臉譜帳號粉絲數超過1.042億，位居全球媒體帳號粉絲數第二位；推特帳號粉絲數約430萬。 有關中國日報亞洲領袖圓桌論壇 中國日報亞洲領袖圓桌論壇（www.cdroundtable.com）, 創建於2010年，旨在搭建一個由亞洲國家和地區的政、商、學界領袖和社會精英參與的高端對話和交流平臺，圍繞亞洲地區經濟、商業、產業和社會發展等具有戰略影響的重要議題展開討論和分享見解，以增進中國與亞洲國家和西方國家的交流和理解。迄今，在港澳和亞太多個國家和地區舉辦逾100屆，逾6萬名決策精英直接參會。