Senior officials discuss political issues with netizens online

Chinanews, Beijing, Oct 16 – “Dear General Party Secretary, do you often surf on the Internet?... Do you often read our suggestions posted online and do you know what some of the issues are that concern us right now? ” Recently, a post written by a cyber citizen with the pen name “xiao huo long (little fire dragon)” was put on the People's Daily discussion forum just before the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held. The post was clicked for more than 200,000 times and about 1,000 people responded to it online. The netizen might not know that the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao had been a netizen himself for a long time. In 2003 when SARS broke out in China, Hu Jintao, who was then just elected as the State President, told a doctor who fought against SARS on the frontline in Guangzhou that he had read his articles about SARS online and he thought his suggestions about SARS were very good. “We haven't thought that our General Secretary has been a netizen himself!” many cyber citizens felt very surprised. From then on, the netizens gave a friendly nickname to Hu Jintao – they called him “Hu Ge (Brother Hu).” Later, an article titled “From 'Hello, Xiaoping' to 'Keep on, Brother Hu'” was widely read by people on the Internet. In the same year, during a visit to Peking University, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also revealed that he was a netizen, too. He told students that he had read students' articles online, and he was deeply moved by their determination to defeat SARS. In later years, when meeting with Chinese and foreign journalists at the National People's Congress (NPC) and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) meetings held from 2005 to 2007, Premier Wen had always expressed his gratitude and concern to Chinese netizens for their enthusiasm for Chinese political affairs. As Chinese Internet industry develops rapidly, the number of Chinese netizens has increased tremendously. In 2005, the total number of Chinese netizens hit the 100-million mark. In June this year, the number further exceeded 160 million, ranking China second in the world in terms of netizen population. The freedom of speech is a distinguished feature for Chinese online discussions. In China, there are about 1.3 million discussion forums of various kinds, the number being the most in the world. In China, Internet has served as a very important platform for Chinese people to express their thoughts and participate in political affairs freely, said a spokesperson at the State Council Information Center. In recent years, many senior Chinese leaders have formed a habit of reading the public's opinions gathered through online discussion forums and collected by various government departments and institutions every day. Much of the information has come from central governments’ news websites, major commercial portals, renowned discussion forums and mainstream overseas websites. The contents are mostly related with hot social issues. For more and more Chinese officials, surfing on the Internet has now become an essential part of their daily work, an official working in a central governmental department told reporters from Chinanews.cn.