Huang Kunming (second left), a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, with China Daily Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Zhou Shuchun (left) during a visit to the newsroom on June 1 in Beijing. (LIU BIN / XINHUA)

President Xi Jinping called on China Daily to make new contributions to promote exchanges and communication between China and the world, as the newspaper marked the 40th anniversary of its founding on June 1.

In a congratulatory letter sent on May 27, Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged the media group to further present “a true, multidimensional and panoramic view of China”.

Recalling the past 40 years, Xi hailed China Daily as having played “an important role” in telling the country’s stories well and making the nation’s voice heard.

Laying out his hopes for the media group, Xi underlined its duty as a bridge between China and the outside world and called for a further buildup of its all-media communication framework.

The goals outlined by Xi in his letter include having an ever-growing influence on the world, achieving greater storytelling regarding China’s development philosophy, path and achievements, and giving a boost to the country’s improved interactions with the rest of the world.

China Daily, founded in 1981, is the country’s first national English-language newspaper with a global circulation.

The past 40 years have seen it developing into a globalized, multi-language, all-media flagship combining newspapers, websites and apps, and it now serves more than 350 million readers all over the world via various print and digital platforms.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, said China Daily is expected to stay true to its duty of bridging China and the world for greater communication, and further present “a true, multidimensional and panoramic view of China”.

The senior Party official made the remark while addressing a celebration on June 1 in Beijing to mark the 40th anniversary of China Daily’s launch.

Huang noted that Xi’s May 27 letter “commends the important role played by China Daily over the past 40 years”, and that it voices great expectations that the media group will better fulfill its duties and mission and make new contributions at a new starting point.

Zhou Shuchun, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, said Xi’s letter marks “a historic moment and a highlight” in the media group’s history, inspires and motivates all staff members, and demonstrates the great emphasis placed on international communication and reporting for the outside world.

“The letter makes clear China Daily’s mission and tasks as well as the goals for improving its international communication capacity in the new era,” he said.

“China Daily will fully, tangibly translate into reality Xi’s instructions, work with a greater sense of responsibility and strive to break new ground in its capacity building and global operations,” Zhou added.

Liao Xiangzhong, Party secretary and president of Communication University of China in Beijing, said Xi’s letter “charts the course for the capacity buildup of all the Chinese media serving subscribers overseas ...” 

China Daily serves as a window of the nation to the world, and it “has made key contributions to the country’s storytelling and image building in the past four decades”, he said.

Ruan Zongze, executive vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said China Daily is “a key, reliable history witness and storyteller of the country’s reform and opening-up as well as its interactions with the world”.

The media group “now shoulders an even greater, challenging task of helping shape an enabling environment for the country that is building its new development pattern”, and “it could make foreign readers better understand the nation’s role as an opportunity rather than a threat to them”, said Ruan.

China Daily readers around the globe, meanwhile, hailed the publication’s development over the past 40 years, saying it has presented the country’s reform and opening-up and played a crucial bridging role between China and the rest of the world.

Colin Mackerras, Sinologist and emeritus professor at Griffith University in Australia, said, “As it happens, I have been reading China Daily since the beginning. I think it is an excellent newspaper and has been getting better over the years.

“I expect it to continue improvements and am confident this will happen.”

Erik Solheim, former under-secretary-general of the United Nations and currently Norway’s environment minister, said China Daily has been an essential companion to the rise of China, which has moved from poverty and isolation to affluence, advanced technologies and global prominence.

Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on US-China Relations, recalled the launch of China Daily in 1981, saying he was living in the Beijing Hotel at the time. “There was little news of the world or of China in English at that time in Beijing, and I always welcomed the delivery of the paper to my door,” Orlins said.

The quality of the journalism has improved immeasurably over the past 40 years, he said, adding that he still reads the newspaper to understand the Chinese government’s perspective on developments in China and the world.

Bernard Dewit, chairman of the Belgian-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and recipient of the 2017 Chinese Government Friendship Award, said he started reading China Daily in 1985, and it “has constantly provided me with very useful information on China and has greatly helped me to better understand the country, its internal policies, its foreign policies and its culture, among others.”

Kenneth M. Quinn, president emeritus of The World Food Prize, said: “It is impressive that editions of China Daily over the past 40 years have formed an enduring substantive record of China’s actions, initiatives and revised policies that have produced such a dramatic economic and agricultural change in your country in such a relatively short period of time.”

Over the past four decades, millions of China Daily readers have been able to follow China’s dramatic economic transformation and the elimination of poverty, Quinn said.

Ronnie Lins, director of the China-Brazil Center for Research and Business, said China Daily has always stood out for having reliable and transparent content produced by top professionals. “I am sure that these 40 years of existence are only part of a long path, which will always continue to contribute to helping the development of the People’s Republic of China and better relations between countries.”

Oleg Timofeev, an associate professor at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, said China Daily has an enormous effect on the international media, as well as global politics and economic and cultural exchanges. He said he hopes China Daily will develop further and continue telling the world the China story.

Chris Horn, managing director of Gold Key Media, said he is an avid reader of China Daily, and that its in-depth content, written from a Chinese perspective, allows him to gain a clear perspective on all aspects of life in China.