President congratulates CNS on 70th anniversary

President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter on Friday to China News Service on its 70th founding anniversary, calling on the news agency to innovate its discourse system and bolster its capacity for international communication.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the agency to enhance the appeal and effectiveness of news reports and build up its links with Chinese language media outlets overseas.

CNS is a State-level news agency established by Chinese journalists and renowned overseas Chinese experts on Oct 1, 1952.

In the letter, Xi encouraged CNS to contribute more efforts to showcasing an image of China that is reliable, admirable and respectable, enhancing the unity of all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation at home and abroad and promoting exchanges between Chinese and other civilizations and people-to-people understanding.

The president commended the positive role of the news agency in telling well China's stories and making China's voices better heard, saying it has adhered to an editorial line of patriotism and persisted in serving the readership of overseas Chinese.

A meeting celebrating the 70th anniversary of CNS was held in Beijing on Friday. You Quan, a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, urged the agency to better tell the stories of China focusing on compatriots in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as overseas Chinese and the international society.