New site for news conferences opens

The building was once the Beijing Telegraph Building, the first large-scale integrated communications hub since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It also represented the largest information hub in Asia in 1958, the year the building was first used.

The previous news conference hall, located at 225 Chaoyangmen Neidajie, began operations in July 2000 and witnessed more than 1,300 news conferences.

China's government information release system has seen great improvements over the past decades. In 1982, as required by the central government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Bureau of Statistics took the lead in starting regular news conferences. In 1992, the State Council Information Office was officially established. In January 1993, the office held its first news conference and invited Li Lanqing, former minister of foreign economic relations and trade, to meet the press.

Since then, the number of news conferences organized by the State Council Information Office has gradually increased, from about a dozen in 1993 to 133 last year. The content of news conferences has also become more diversified, from simply releasing information about government policies and decision-making to timely responding to hot social issues. So far, Party and government organizations at central and local levels have all established information release systems and have 244 spokespersons in total.