China's most important political event in five years was brought to a world audience on Monday as foreign and domestic news organizations carried reams of copy on wire, Internet, and also live on TV and on radio.
At 9:00 AM when the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) kicked off, China Central Television began live broadcasting the event on Channels 1, 4 and 9 (English) as well as the news, Spanish and French channels.
In his two-and-half-hour keynote speech, Hu Jintao, general secretary of the 16th CPC Central Committee, outlined the country's ambitious goals for economic, political and social developments, as well as the nation's position on the world stage.
As Hu went on with his speech, major foreign news agencies, such as Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as China's official Xinhua News Agency, were running dozens of series of updated stories that offered digests and interpretations of his speech to readers around the world.
These news providers focused their attention on several key points in Hu's speech -- a peace agreement with Taiwan, a quadrupling of China's economy by 2020, a crackdown on corruption, greater energy conservation and environmental protection, and efforts to spread the economic boom's benefits more fairly throughout society.
In one of its stories, Reuters drew several analysts' view and offered immediate commentaries of Hu's speech.
"The speech sends the signal that the government will ensure sustainable economic prosperity, which is the cornerstone of the stock market's boom," fund manager Liu Lifeng with BOC international holdings, Shanghai was quoted as saying.
Shifting the emphasis towards per capita targets reflects the Chinese leadership's concern for ordinary Chinese citizens, Wang Qing, a Hong Kong-based economist with Morgan Stanley, was quoted by AFP as saying.
"It highlights the current administration's concern about people's welfare," Wang said.
China's vast number of internet surfers were also able to be kept updated of the event online as almost all of China's leading portals filled their homepages with reports about Hu's speech Monday morning.
(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2007)
