CMG releases cultural, creative products for 2025 Spring Festival Gala

Chinese state broadcaster China Media Group (CMG) on Monday released a series of cultural and creative products for its 2025 Spring Festival Gala, as the Year of the Snake in the Chinese lunar calendar is approaching.

At the releasing ceremony held in Beijing, the CMG unveiled its copyright and cultural and creative product cooperation plan, cooperation model and channel building plan for the upcoming Spring Festival Gala.

The CMG stated that it will boost IP brand authorizing and marketing cooperation on copyrights and cultural and creative products and build a comprehensive and multi-level channel network, by taking the programs of the coming Spring Festival Gala as the basis and combining the traditional cultural customs of the Spring Festival and the popular culture in the emerging digital economy era.

A slew of cultural and creative products were displayed at the event, such as mascot, Spring Festival couplets, Spring Festival Gala bowls, and red scarf with Spring Festival Gala logos.

The CMG will go all out to create a series of cultural and creative products and also launch colorful cultural activities in an effort to drive the high-quality growth of its cultural and creative brands and expand the influence of the Spring Festival Gala.

In addition, the CMG also inked agreements with multiple enterprises to work on the integration of copyrights and cultural products.

The broadcaster also announced that it will join hands with the Beijing Dance Academy to adapt and explore the original dance "Koi" performed at the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Dragon and jointly choreograph a 90-minute dance drama "Koi".

The Spring Festival Gala hosted by the CMG has been an essential part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration since 1983. The gala includes songs, dance, comic sketches, operas and folk arts.

The annual spectacle, known as the most-watched television program in the world, is broadcast on the eve of the Chinese New Year, when families come together to ring in the new lunar year.

The 2025 Spring Festival Gala will be on the air on the lunar New Year's Eve, which falls on January 28, 2025.

CMG releases cultural, creative products for 2025 Spring Festival Gala

A China Pavilion officially opened on Monday at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, highlighting China's decades-long efforts and achievements in combating desertification.

Covering more than 600 square meters, the China Pavilion is the second-largest national pavilion at the event. Its exhibition, themed "Cross-Century Green Great Wall, China's Restoration in Action," showcases the nation's battle against desertification, particularly through the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, a major national initiative aimed at reversing land desertification in its north, northwest and northeast regions by surrounding desert lands with trees and vegetation.

Addressing the opening ceremony, UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza Murillo praised China's significant contributions to curbing its desertification, including controlling the expansion of the Taklimakan Desert in west China, the world's second-largest shifting sand desert.

She emphasized that effective policies, community and local government involvement, as well as innovation and technology, are key components of China's success.

"The example of what the government of China is doing in restoring land, in combating desertification, means a lot to humanity. It is inspiring and remarkable to see that China has already achieved land degradation neutrality ahead of time by restoring 50 percent of curable degraded sandy land. This is amazing. It's clear that we need good leadership, good policies, engagement of the society, engagement of national governments. It's really good to see this engagement, and of course, innovation is technology, it's traditional knowledge, and this is what we are seeing in the China experience," said Murillo.

COP16, held from Dec. 2 to 13 under the theme "Our Land. Our Future," is the largest UN land-focused conference to date and the first UNCCD COP in the Middle East and North Africa.

China Pavilion opens at UN conference on desertification held in Riyadh