Xinhua News Agency on Friday signed an agreement on news photo services with the Russian News & Information Agency (RIA Novosti).
Under the agreement, Xinhua will be the authorized distributor of news photos and photo archive services of RIA Novosti on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as in Southeast Asia.
Xinhua Vice President Lu Wei said at the signing ceremony in Beijing that the agreement marked a key progress by Xinhua in joining with other news agencies to develop the global market of photo services.
This was also a consensus reached during the first World Media Summit held in Beijing two weeks ago, Lu said.
He added that the agreement would further the cooperation between Xinhua and RIA Novosti, which began 14 years ago.
Stanislav Kranc, head of RIA Novosti's Beijing bureau, said the two agencies had achieved good results in introducing Russian economic information to the Chinese market under an agreement signed in April last year.