Minister takes question from netizen

Foreign Minister Wang Yi held his longest news conference on Tuesday, taking 19 questions in two hours.

But the last one was not from the media but from a Chinese netizen.

The question was: "President Xi Jinping made eight overseas visits last year, and, Mr Foreign Minister, you spent almost as much time up in the air as you did on the ground. We are curious about what Chinese diplomats are busy with. Is it relevant to the lives of ordinary people?"

The minister used two examples to answer the question. In one, he said a freight train line linking Yiwu in Zhejiang province and Teheran, the Iranian capital, opened just four days after Xi visited Iran in January, cutting transportation time by half for more than 70,000 merchants in Yiwu.

In the other example, he said the Foreign Ministry set up a forum last week to enable foreign ambassadors and overseas businessmen in China to learn about the business potential in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. The ministry will hold such forums every two or three months.

"Chinese diplomacy will get even busier in the future," Wang said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Wang supported the Information Department's idea to select questions from netizens.