Chongqing—On Oct 19, the 5th China Newspaper Innovation and Development Conference opened in Chongqing, gathering representatives from provincial publicity departments, central and local newspaper publishers, platform companies, universities, and industry associations to chart the future of the country's press industry.

Hosted by the National Press and Publication Administration and themed around advancing systemic reform of mainstream media during the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan period, the conference called for richer, higher-quality content, deeper institutional innovation, and accelerated digital and intelligent transformation across the newspaper sector.

On Oct 20, the 5th Conference on Innovation and Development in China's Newspaper Industry commenced in Chongqing (Photo: Feng Xiaolou)

The project centers on Kukan: The Secret of Unconquerable China, a 1941 color documentary filmed by American war correspondent Rey Scott and co-produced by Chinese American playwright Li Ling-Ai. The film, which captured rare footage of wartime Chongqing under Japanese bombing, received a special Academy Award in 1942 — yet its prints vanished after the war, making it the only Oscar-honored documentary once classified as lost. A surviving copy was only rediscovered in 2009, when Chinese American filmmaker Robin Lung found it in the basement of Scott's family home.

WCICO's Return of Kukan drew a lot of attention (Photo: Feng Xiaolou)

The center also produced a companion documentary, The Return of Kukan, which places China's resistance within the broader framework of the world's anti-fascist war. Structured around three narrative themes — indomitable resistance, the witness of history, and the bridge of friendship — the project combines long-form and short-form video across online and offline channels, an approach credited with shifting China's wartime narrative from one shaped by others to one told by China itself, filling a long-standing Eastern gap in global World War II memory.

WCICO also presented writings about the project (Photo: Feng Xiaolou)

The project has already collected notable honors, including the Golden Angel Award for International Peace Contribution at the 21st Chinese American TV Festival and a TV documentary nomination at the 29th Starlight Awards, China's national television arts prize. It also ranked first among China's top 10 local-level international communication cases of 2025 and was included in the 2026 national catalog of 50 key audiovisual works for international communication.