An international competition for short-video creators was launched in Beijing on Tuesday and is calling for short-video submissions telling stories about China.

It is the third year of the My China Story International Short-Video Competition, which is categorized into three sections this year. A new section awards short-video creators using smartphones.

The 2021 event was organized by the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration and sponsored by the Guangdong provincial government.

The competition offers a platform for foreigners to tell what they saw and discovered in China from their personal experience, said Huang Huilin, an expert on international communication from the Beijing Normal University.

"Personal stories can be appealing and serve as an effective tool of communication," Huang said.

Aiming to inspire international short-video creators to record China in a panoramic view, the competition was inaugurated in September 2018. It received over 400,000 submissions in 2020.