News focus turns toward grassroots

On Feb 19 last year, President Xi Jinping used a remote news reporting system at Xinhua News Agency to talk with a correspondent in a village in Lankao county, Henan province.

He said that the work of grassroots officials is integral to the Communist Party of China's rule and is directly linked to the people's interests. He added that journalists should visit grassroots areas more often and do more in-depth reporting on the work being done there.

I was working in Kenya as a reporter at the time and the president's request resonated with me. I couldn't agree more that reporters should reach out to grassroots environments. So I soon joined my peers from other media outlets, including Xinhua and China Radio International, and traveled to some of these areas. We visited construction sites of Chinese companies abroad and went to places where Chinese experts are working on aid projects, many of which are in remote, isolated areas that had never been visited by a Chinese journalist before.