SATV, Sept. 27: Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, recently replied to a letter from the faculty and students of the Communication University of China on the occasion of its 70th anniversary, extending congratulations and greetings to the faculty, students and alumni of the university.

Xi urged the university to take solid steps to implement the fundamental task of fostering virtues and educating people on the new journey in the new era. He emphasized the importance of focusing on the needs of the press and public communication, highlighting the university's distinctive features, deepening reform and innovation, and continuously improving its teaching and research capacity, in a bid to cultivate more high-calibre journalism and communication professionals and make new contributions to the development of the Party's cause concerning public communication and culture.

The university's predecessor was founded in 1954 as a technical training program for broadcasting by the central administration. In 2004, it changed its name from Beijing Broadcasting Institute to the Communication University of China.

Recently, the faculty and students of the university wrote a letter to Xi, reporting on the achievements of the university in the past 70 years, especially since the 18th CPC National Congress, and expressing their determination to serve better the Party's work on public communication and culture and to contribute to advancing Chinese modernization.