President Xi Jinping visited the headquarters of major State media in Beijing on Friday morning and sent an audio greeting for the upcoming Lantern Festival to people across China

President Xi Jinping visited the headquarters of major State media in Beijing on Friday morning and sent an audio greeting for the upcoming Lantern Festival to people across China

At around 8:40 am, Xi arrived at the headquarters of People’s Daily newspaper and sent the greeting on its social media platforms WeChat and Weibo and its news app

Hello, everyone. With the Lantern Festival around the corner, I wish you all happy, healthy and successful new year, said President Xi in a short audio message recorded at the newspaper. Xi pressed the keyboard and sent the greetings on the three platforms, generating warm response from netizens

As of 11:20 am, the greeting has been forwarded nearly 10,000 times and liked by more than 17,000 people on the Weibo account of People’s Daily, about two hours after it was published at 9:36 am

Xi also visited the headquarters of Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television (CCTV) later on

Many netizens thanked Xi and extended an early Lantern Festival greeting to him. One netizen named "What she does not know" said, "Hi, uncle Xi, I wish you a happy Lantern Festival in advance."

Xi also spoke with villagers from Chixi village in Ningde city, East China’s Fujian province through a live video chat at the newspaper’s studio, and wished them a better life

Chixi is a poor village and when Xi was the former Party secretary of Ningde city, he paid much attention to poverty alleviation in the village