BEIJING -- Since the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress in 2012, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, has been all over the country on inspection tours.

Five years ago, Xi chose Shenzhen as his first stop of inspection, outside the capital, after being elected as the Party's top leader. Shenzhen is in Guangdong province, China's reform and opening up frontier.

Shortly after returning from Guangdong, he visited impoverished villages in Hebei province, near Beijing, to inspect poverty alleviation efforts.

These moves signalled the focus of Xi's governance, which has highlighted fulfilling the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation and realizing the goals set for the centenaries of the CPC in 2020 and the People's Republic of China in 2049.

Since 2012, Xi has completed 50 inspection tours across the country, totaling 151 days.

REFORM & INNOVATION

Reform and innovation have always been in Xi's thoughts.

In 2016, Xi visited Xiaogang, Anhui province, and walked into the courtyard where in 1978, 18 farmers signed a secret agreement to divide communally owned farmland into family plots and ignited the flame for China's rural land reform. Xi chose here to say that reform is the only way out and that the word should be repeatedly injected with new meaning.

During his visits to the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, Tianjin Binhai New Area, Wuhan Countryside Comprehensive Property Exchange and others, Xi put comprehensively deepened reform on top of his agenda.

In the provinces of Jiangsu, Shandong and Hubei, he stressed the need for bold exploration and advancing reform, and explicitly stated balance should be properly dealt with in the process, including that between boldness and steadiness, and reform and stability.

In 2014, Xi went to the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and boarded the sample of C919, China's self-developed large passenger aircraft. He encouraged engineers to give themselves progressive goals and strive to get China's own passenger aircraft in the air. Only three years later, C919 completed its maiden flight.

While inspecting research institutes, universities, hi-tech companies and new development zones, he has always stressed the need for innovation and the importance of commercializing research results.

POVERTY RELIEF

In the past five years, Xi visited a number of impoverished places and households. From the Liupanshan Mountain region in west China to the Dabieshan Mountain region in the east, Xi went to all the poorest areas.

He visited homes of impoverished workers and villagers in Inner Mongolia, Hunan, Ningxia, amongst others, to see with his own eyes the life of people in poverty in order to work out solutions for improvement.

Xi said it was heart wrenching to see people live in such difficulties.