Profile: Xi Jinping: Man of the people, statesman of vision (17)

（Xinhua）  09:24, December 24, 2012

To achieve these goals, he made an individual case study in addition to making overall arrangements. In order to know how the localities were affected by provincial policies, he went five times to a less-developed mountain village called Xiajiang within less than two years.

He paid special attention to the marine economy. In December 2002, he put forward the goal of building Zhejiang into a province with a strong marine economy, followed by guidelines and plans to realize this goal. The marine economy in Zhejiang has since developed quickly, with annual growth of 19.3 percent. It accounted for nearly 8 percent of the Zhejiang economy in 2005.

He pushed for the integration of Ningbo and Zhoushan harbors. In 2006, Ningbo-Zhoushan harbor had 420 million tonnes of cargo throughput, ranking the second in China and among the world's top three.

He also pushed for the construction of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, an icon of cross-sea bridges in China and once the world's longest cross-sea bridge.

In 2003, Xi proposed that rural communities should be more like urban communities, and efforts should be made to reduce the urban-rural gap in quality of life.

Zhejiang had realized the development targets one by one during Xi's tenure. The province had the highest rating in ecology and the environment among all provincial-level regions in 2005. In 2006, 94.77 percent of the people were satisfied with the province's public security, making Zhejiang one of the safest provinces in the country.

When Xi was in Zhejiang, the province's GDP exceeded 1 trillion yuan in 2004, GDP per capita exceeded 3,000 U.S. dollars in 2005 and stood at nearly 4,000 U.S. dollars in 2006. The province ranked the fourth in sustainable development in 2006, next to Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin.

Furthermore, all the province's poverty-stricken counties and townships shook off poverty during the period.

In 2007, Xi was appointed secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee.

Within a month of his appointment, Xi conducted research on the people's livelihood, development, the Shanghai World Expo, and the fight against corruption. The ninth Shanghai municipal congress of the CPC was successfully held, which invigorated local officials, rebuilt Shanghai's image and set forth a blueprint for Shanghai for the next five years.

Xi has said that a county Party chief should visit all the villages within the county, a city Party chief all the townships and a provincial Party chief all the counties and cities.

He visited all the villages in Zhengding. In Ningde, he visited nine counties within the first three months, and traveled to most townships later on. After he was transferred to Zhejiang in 2002, he visited all 90 counties in just over a year. During his tenure in Shanghai, he visited all 19 districts and counties in seven months. After he came to work in the central authority, he visited all the 31 provinces, regions and municipalities on the mainland.