President pops in for online chat

By Yang Chen  |   2008-6-21  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

PRESIDENT Hu Jintao made his first online chat with the public yesterday, revealing that online opinions were a key source for him to learn of the issues people care most about.

The 20-minute chat, which started at 10am at Qiangguo BBS of People.com.cn, was part of Hu's inspection tour of People's Daily as he congratulated the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China on its 60th anniversary.

The Website announced Hu's chat at 9:30am yesterday and began to collect questions submitted via the Internet. About 300 posts turned up with questions ranging through the country's reforms, mainland-Taiwan relations, corruption, price hikes, state asset management and supervision - even to his personal hobbies.

Hu took three online questions during the short chat. The president told netizens that reading news, both domestic and international, was usually what he enjoyed the most while surfing the Internet.

"But at the same time, I also would like to know what the online public is talking and thinking about and what their suggestions are to help the Party and government work," Hu continued, emphasizing that his government is paying "a lot of attention" to the online world.

"The Internet is a key channel to collect the public's ideas, which are the basis for the government to carry out work and make decisions," Hu said.

Though busy running the country, Hu said he tried to get online as much as possible and Qiangguo BBS, a popular online community forum featuring politics, is always on the president's browsing list.

China has the world's most net users with 221 million as of February, outnumbering that of the United States.

At a meeting early last year, Hu said it was vital to the country's long-term stability that it was able to develop and manage the Internet well.

The Qiangguo forum originates from a virtual reality community launched by the People's Daily Website to lodge protests over the US-led NATO forces bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 9, 1999.

On June 19 same year it was renamed the Qiangguo ("powering the nation") forum.

It has more than 23,000 daily postings and the highest simultaneous web page visits exceeded 1.4 million.