Chinese TV networks plan ASEAN alliance

Dongmeng TV accounted for nearly 25 percent of Sunway's media revenue, which stood at more than 60 million yuan last year. The TV business is also connected to tourism-related businesses.

He said he hopes the group's TV programs will appeal to new generations of overseas Chinese.

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What the station needs most, apart from equipment, he said, is TV professionals who are proficient both in English and the local language and understand the local way of thinking and living.

The domestic operation also is striving to transform by developing animated games and consolidating media and e-commerce resources.

The group aims to have its pharmaceutical e-commerce arm, jianke.com, listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations, an over-the-counter market that is known as China's third board, later this year, He said.

Sunway Media is just one of several Chinese companies that started investing in TV stations or channels targeting foreign audiences in the past decade.

Blue Ocean Network, founded by Beijing-based Blue Ocean Group, began broadcasting in 2010.

It has the broadest coverage and largest Western audience of any non-State English-language Chinese TV network, and covers Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe and Africa, according to its website.

In 2009, Beijing-based Xiking Group, founded by Ye Maoxi, a businessman from Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, bought then-money-losing British satellite TV station Propeller TV.