District boosts new media development and cross-Straits integration

Haicang district in Xiamen is seeing the fruits of its new media platforms in recent years, among them its official WeChat account.

The account recently released an article about 660 job hunters applying for 18 teaching jobs offered by a middle school affiliated to Central China Normal University.

The district's account is one of the most influential new media accounts in Haicang, in East China's Fujian province. It has published more than 1,200 original stories since it was launched on June 1, 2017.

It has more than 130,000 followers and the average views of its lead stories exceed 7,000. It has become a life necessity of residents in Haicang, local media reported.

Local reports said Haicang has made achievements in new media development in the past two years, a growth that is closely related to local publicity professionals.

In late 2016, the district government determined it lacked enough publicity professionals and employed such people from publicity companies.

Yang Jixiang, deputy head of the Haicang government office, was recruited at that time from Xiamen Daily. Yang participated in creation and development of the district's official WeChat account.

He set up a professional publicity team and recruited Peng Jianwen, a new media professional, to work as director of editorial office at the company that mainly runs the WeChat account and a microblog account. "We offer original news by the principle of 'in easy-to-understand language, down to earth, focusing on people's daily life and feelings," Peng said, adding that original content and interactive communication has pleased local people. He said the WeChat account has become their "fourth meal".

The account never publishes reports on government officials' work nor their photos, but reports of local people's life and feelings instead. Yang said when the account was set up, local officials set its tone as telling Haicang people's stories to Haicang people.

Haicang also made efforts to improve social governance in recent years and has cross-Straits integration as its mission, local media reported.

It launched a pilot community building project with the construction and urban-rural development research fund of National Taiwan University in 2014, attracting a Taiwan community planner surnamed Lee to work as the first Taiwan community assistant in Haicang.

In the past five years, she promoted Taiwan's community building concepts in developing a Fujian-Taiwan ecological culture village called Qingjiao village. Lee helped improve the village's environment and transformed it into a tourist destination in Xiamen.

Haicang has recruited 54 young people from Taiwan to work as community assistants. They participate in formulating and implementing rural revitalization plans in communities, promoting volunteer service and establishing rural industry cooperatives.

As there are more and more such assistants in Haicang, a cross-Straits urban-rural development fund was set up in the district for facilitating the assistants' work.

Lee assumed the secretary-general position of the fund. She said the fund will pay more attention to professional training and project planning and will apply Taiwan's community governance experience to Haicang.