Chinese media giant eyes investment in Turkey

By Bahattin Gonultas

BEIJING

Chinese media firm Startimes Media plans to work with Turkey and enter the Turkish market, the company's overseas marketing development director said Tuesday.

"Turkey is an important country for our company. We started to talk with Turkish officials and currently looking for a strategic partner in the country,” Jashua Wang Jin told Anadolu Agency.

Wang said when the media giant finds a partner, it will invest at once.

The Chinese group has planned to bring their new technologies to Turkey and export Turkish TV series to more countries in Africa and Asia, he said.

"We can reach more countries by showing Turkish series on our channels," Wang added.

Wang said the company set up an interpretation and dubbing centers in 2011 to expand its operations. "We can do same thing for Turkish TV series, " he said.

According to Wang, Startimes employs voice talent from China, Britain, France, the U.S., Canada, and Portugal.

"We dubbed 180 series in African languages such as English, French, Portuguese, Swahili, and Yoruba," Wang said.

StarTimes is an influential system integrator, technology provider, network operator, and content provider in the Chinese TV broadcasting industry.

The company provides content or infrastructure services to more than 300 radio and TV stations in Africa.

Wang Jin said that they would like to benefit from improved ties between Turkey and China under the Belt and Road Initiative.

The initiative seeks to build a trade and infrastructure network along ancient trade routes such as the Silk Road to connect Asia with Europe, Africa, and beyond, according to China’s official Xinhua newswire.

Wang Jin said StarTimes began to expand its business to Africa in 2002 and established subsidiaries that support digitization in more than 30 African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Mozambique.

"We have almost 4,000 employees, 3,000 of them in Africa. This would be seen as a great success. Also, people who has no access to electricity can watch TV at night with solar panels we installed in Africa," he said.

Adding that the group owns 38 self-produced channels, Wang said they have 7 sports channels in Africa and a total of 8 million subscribers.