According to an article pointed out by China Words, China has decided to move forward with an international television station along the lines of Al-Jazeera, seeing it as a possible foreign-policy tool.:

Among his set of six canvases that were mostly covered with images of Saddam Hussein’s two sons was one entitled Al-Jazeera TV, an abstract work that Wang said represented the role the television channel had played in challenging the dominance of Western networks.
Followed not just by Chinese artists but also by government officials and intellectuals, the Aljazeera story has become a sort of model for China’s own attempts to create a globally recognised television network….
Discarding their original preconceptions during the Iraq war, Chinese officials are now looking at Aljazeera from a different angle. How can a developing country produce an internationally successful television network?

How indeed? Well, for starters, not like this… (Richard Willmsen describes CCTV International)

You have this guy, for example, who preens and stammers his way through some pretend economics programme, accompanied by a Chinese woman whose attempts to pronounce the word ‘aluminium’ brought tears of pity to my eyes - although I hasten to add that he didn’t do much better. There is a young American woman who, during an incisive piece I saw on the important subject of how mobile phones, like, exist?, and how, like, people in China use them?!? changed her clothes no fewer than seven times, which is more costume changes than in an average Kylie Minogue concert. Then there is a fairly geriatric guy who provides the links between the domestic news (propaganda) and the foreign news (footage from international news agencies with all the interesting bits cut out), and whose exclusive qualification for the job seems to be an Australian accent. Also, viewers are treated to the sight of a team of wide-boys in ill-fitting suits who tell us about China’s weather. They do it surprisingly quickly considering the size of the country. They also bounce in a jolly and wide-eyed fashion around the screen, and I could try and think of something nice to say about them but to be absolutely honest what most comes to mind is the word wankers.