Xi Focus-Closeup: Constant care for people in disaster-affected areas

BEIJING -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, visited a village affected by floods last summer during his inspection tour in North China's Tianjin municipality from Feb 1 to 2, spending time in this region just ahead of the 2024 Spring Festival.

Since assuming the Party's top post in November 2012, Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has always spent time with ordinary people, especially those in disaster-affected regions, ahead of the Spring Festival, which is the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar.

In late July and early August last year, extreme heavy rain in North China caused floods in the Haihe River Basin that inundated much of the Dongdian flood storage and detention area in Tianjin.

At the home of villager Du Honggang, Xi chatted with this big family consisting of four generations living together, inquiring about the family's losses during the disaster, their post-disaster production and income, and carefully tallying the numbers mentioned during the conversation.

Du told the general secretary that the family's more than 10 mu (about 0.67 hectares) of corn fields and vegetable patches were damaged by the flood, but with the help of the Party and the government, they managed to recover quickly, and their vegetable greenhouses were able to produce a good harvest.

Xi told villagers upon his leaving that he was delighted to see that their production and life had mostly recovered, and they have a warm home through the cold winter.

Xi has always been concerned about those affected by natural disasters, and made important instructions on disaster prevention and relief work on multiple occasions, requiring relevant authorities to ensure the safety of people's lives and property, as well as to urgently and effectively restore work and life order in disaster-hit regions.

In early September last year, Xi visited flood-affected villagers in the city of Shangzhi, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province. As winter approached in northern China, Xi traveled to the severely flood-stricken areas of Beijing and Hebei to visit affected people, and inspect and guide post-disaster reconstruction work.

"I have always been concerned about people in disaster-affected areas," he said, when leaving a village impacted by floods during the inspection tour to Beijing and Hebei in November 2023. "The CPC is a party that serves the people wholeheartedly and always puts the people above everything else."