China takes center stage at DISCOP Africa

Johannesburg November.5 (People’s Daily Online) - DISCOP Africa kicked off on Wednesday at the Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg.

As an important platform for pitching, development, financing and co-production of television and film industry, it's expected to draw thousands of delegates from thousands of companies around the globe, and runs until Friday.

This year’s event attracts over 1700 content production companies from nearly 90 countries around the globe to showcase their works. DISCOP gives content creators the chance to network with established production, commissioning and advertising executives.

China as the country of honor of DISCOP Africa in 2015, sent a delegation of more than 20 media companies, promoting TV series, documentaries, cartoons and entertaining programs. 6 of them signed agreement on collaboration with 6 African television companies, which means more Chinese television programs are going to be dubbed and located on the African continent in the near future.

“The Cooperation on film and TV industry not only plays an important part in China-Africa people-to-people exchanges, but also stands as a promising growth point of China-Africa practical cooperation.” said Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Tian Xuejun, “We meet each other’s demands, enjoy respective competitive edges and can offer opportunities to each other. China-Africa cooperation surely has great potential and broad prospects.”

Being the second largest film market in the world, China’s total sales of film tickets were about 29.6 billion Yuan (R65 billion) in 2014, which marks a 36% growth; the number of digital set-top box users was nearly 300 million, which covered 70% of the total families.