BEIJING, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- In 1988, when Xi Jinping took office as Party chief of Ningde, a mountain-locked prefecture in Fujian Province, one of his priorities was to resume a discontinued newspaper last published nearly two decades prior to his arrival.
Due to its geographic disadvantage, Ningde's economic performance had long ranked last among the whole province. Fact-finding led Xi to note that there was no local newspaper, radio or TV channel to spread the Party's principles and policies to the public.
"Public communication should always come first before any other work is carried out. How can Ningde develop well without a local paper?" Xi ordered all-out efforts to resume the publication of Mindong Paper, which was suspended in 1969.
No funding, no offices, and no staff -- the project faced multiple challenges, each tackled one by one under Xi's guidance. He helped secure 100,000 yuan (13,928 U.S. dollars) and rented an office for the newspaper, and selected a local journalist to spearhead the publication.
Months later, Mindong Paper rolled off the press. The first edition carried a foreword by Xi, and soon nine correspondent posts were established across the prefecture.
Under his byline, Xi outlined the principles of running the paper as well as the guidelines for editing, and urged efforts to make the paper a success.
In May 1989, Xi convened a meeting on public communication. Xi said that the press and public communication sector should never blindly follow what others say, or follow various ideological trends without critical judgment. Otherwise, he said, chaos would ensue.
In Xi's eyes, press and public communication work is crucial to governing the country and concerns the country's fundamental interests.
After he left Ningde to assume higher posts, Xi continued to read Mindong Paper, which was later renamed Mindong Daily. He was especially concerned with the coverage of people living in poverty.
At the end of 2000, a reporter wrote about the underprivileged residents of Lianfengsan Village in Ningde, who suffered from a lack of transportation infrastructure.
After reading the report, Xi instructed relevant departments of Ningde to check the situation and take concrete measures. Later, roads were built with funds from the government to connect the village to the outside, which greatly benefited local people.
Years later, when serving as the provincial leader in the neighboring Zhejiang, Xi made an instruction that the work of press and public communication should serve the interest of the Party and people, help eliminate vice and exalt virtue, and strengthen the ability to hear and see.
From the post of grassroots Party cadre to the general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Xi has always cared about, trusted and supported the work of press and public communication. He has cherished and given full play to the role of news media in making the Party's voice heard, building up momentum across the country, and bringing progress and prosperity.
In August 2018, while addressing a national conference, Xi, as the country's top leader, underscored the importance of fulfilling the missions and tasks of public communication work under new circumstances.
He called for solid public communication work to unite the people to embrace shared ideals, convictions, values, and moral standards, thus, making greater contributions to the overall situation of the Party and the state.
Xi stressed the importance of taking a firm hold on maintaining the right tone in public communication to boost morale and raise people's spirits in the Party and across the country.
He also called for efforts to promote socialist cultural-ethical progress and cultivate and observe core socialist values to foster a new generation capable of shouldering the mission of national rejuvenation. ■