Party officials engage citizens through Internet

Editor's note: On Tuesday at a symposium on cyber security and informatization, Chinese President Xi Jinping called on officials at all levels of the Party and the state to heed public opinions using the Internet. Indeed, quite a number of senior officials go online to get information and interact with Internet users through social media like microblogs and Wechat.

A screenshot shows Zhang Chunxian's letter to Internet users that has published on Rednet.cn.

Zhang Chunxian

Zhang, Party chief of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, is widely known as a microblog activist.

Zhang first sought public opinions on the Internet in 2005 when he was the Party chief Central China's Hunan province. He said officials should learn how to use new media in collecting public opinions for decision-making.

In 2007, Zhang registered an account on the online forum of the local Hunan's news portal Rednet.cn to communicate with Internet users.

In 2011, he started his personal Tencent microblog account during the Two Sessions to collect suggestions of Internet users. Within two weeks, he had 300,000 fans.

Some Internet users deliberately left some messages on his page to know whether he really uses it. Surprisingly, 75 Internet users were replied one by one.