By Minahil Tomchi
A high level team of China International Communications Group (CICG) is In Pakistan’s Capital City of Islamabad to hold 2026 China-South Asia Forum on Poverty reduction and Development Cooperation. This is a new role that has been added to the responsibilities of CICG with aim to raise awareness about the future dangers of poverty increase and to explore and discover new ways and means to tackle the current and future poverty and development challenges in the backdrop of China’s own successful poverty combat under the visionary leadership of President Xi Jinping. Since China has a wonderful success story of pulling around 100 million people of its own society out of extreme poverty with scores of models, projects and methodologies, CICG has been given the responsibilities to communicate, highlight importance of the looming threat of poverty increase and to deliberate on exploring highly effective ways and means to reduce the menace and introduce new project of development through development cooperation.
The CICG has already played a key role in this direction and are doing the exercise of holding these Anti poverty and development Forums across South Asia including Colombo, Sri Lanka and Kathmandu, Nepal while the 2026 Forum being held in Islamabad, Pakistan. The previous Forums on the issue came out as great success and proved out to be very helpful for introduction of structural reforms and development plans in the relevant areas which indicate that CICG’s Islamabad Forum will also bring out tremendous results in this direction.
The CICG is not unknown to the people of Pakistan, since the decades of 1960s and 1970s, CICG’s publications like China Pictorial and its Urdu version Cheen Ba Tassweer have been captivating Pakistani readers for decades, playing a very pivotal roles in understanding China and promoting Pakistan-China relations particularly at the grassroots level, spectacularly enhancing people to people contacts. These publications used to reach not only to readers in mega or metropolis cities of Pakistan but also to the little, small and remote villages in far-flung areas of the country. Though in today’s era internet is one of the top sources of such knowledge, yet many serious experts and intellectuals are off the firm belief that with huge interest about developing amongst all classes of Pakistani society, such publications are very much required for enhancing knowledge and understanding China by the over 250 million people of Pakistan with rapid growth of young students and entrepreneurs and trading eager to learn more and more about China before embarking on journeys for education or business purposes. These experts and observers believe that particularly the rural areas of Baluchistan and Northern Areas as well as KP and South Punjab, where there is very little or even no internet service available, such publications could become the most effective and perhaps the only source of understanding China, countering the baseless propagandas by the West to create misunderstandings about China across Pakistan.
China International Communications Group (CICG) was founded in October 1949, since when it has been introducing China’s development to the world and promoting international exchanges.
CICG is composed of 21 subsidiaries, administers two national associations and has 24 overseas branches in 14 countries and regions. Annually, it publishes some 3,000 books and periodicals in over 40 languages. Its publications are distributed in more than 180 countries and regions, and its online audience spans the whole globe.
Since its inception, CICG has pooled a large number of prestigious experts and embarked on a journey of China’s international communication. Over the past seven decades, it has been led by Qiao Guanhua and 10 other preeminent experts in fields like diplomacy, translation, and journalism. Among its professional team, CICG not only has renowned translators like Feng Yidai, Yang Xianyi, and Ye Junjian, but also acclaimed writers like Mao Dun, Ba Jin, and Xiao Qian, as well as famous foreign experts like Israel Epstein, Sidney Shapiro, Betty Chandler, and Ruth Weiss.
CICG boasts rich experience in the translation and publishing of works in foreign languages. Its professional team of translators and publishers have mastered the largest number of languages and represent the highest level of expertise in their fields in China. Through its expertise in international communication and outstanding work style and mechanism, it provides a strong support for China’s international communication efforts.
With the foreign expert team further expanded, CICG has cultivated an ever-growing high-level professional team. British expert David Ferguson, Egyptian expert Hosam Elmaghrabi and Peruvian expert Rebeca Phang have received the Friendship Award from the Chinese government, and Sidney Shapiro and British experts Paul White and David Ferguson have won the Special Book Award of China.
CICG has established extensive contacts, reached a series of cooperation agreements and co-organized a wide range of cultural exchange activities with international organizations, media, publishers, universities, think tanks and training institutions.
Working with overseas publishing institutions, CICG has established dozens of international editorial offices for planning, editing and publishing China-themed books and set up more than 10 China Book Centers. In addition, it cooperates extensively with a wide range of well-known global news outlets.
CICG and its international partners jointly hold nearly 100 high-end international conferences and forums every year, including the Forum on People-to-People and Cultural Exchanges among BRICS Countries, Beijing-Tokyo Forum, China-South Korea Media High-level Dialogue, China-ASEAN Media Cooperation Forum, and the International Seminar on Global Poverty Reduction Partnerships. These activities serve as a platform for CICG to strengthen ties with over 700 experts and scholars from around the world and actively promote cultural exchanges.
CICG is also engaged in translation cooperation. In collaboration with the International Federation of Translators, it has held regional and global translation conferences such as the Asia-Pacific Translation and Interpreting Forum. The vocational qualification examination it administers — the China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters (CATTI) — has been launched in 74 countries and regions.
CICG has also established partnerships with more than 10 overseas colleges and universities from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Japan and Russia.
