File photo taken in 1988 shows Xi Jinping (front), then secretary of the Ningde Prefecture Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), participates in farm work during his investigation in the countryside. (Xinhua)

Xi Jinping, newly-elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has long underscored solid work, as showcased by his recent remarks that "making empty talk is harmful to the nation, while doing practical work can help it thrive."

To put "practical work" in place, Xi presided over a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee that adopted eight measures to improve Party work style and tighten the bond with the people.

The measures include more meetings with the people, traveling light with a small entourage and using fewer traffic controls, shortening meetings and speeches. The new measures have earned acclaim both at home and abroad.

"Only solid work ensures that one will take the lead," Xi has said.

When he served in Zhengding County, Hebei Province, Xi said that developing human resources was the key to shaking off poverty and backwardness in the county. He attended to the job himself by inviting professionals to the county and drawing up recruitment advertisements for talented personnel from across the country.

In the winter of 1983, he traveled to the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang to invite a cosmetics expert to work in Zhengding. Without a detailed address for the expert, he went door to door asking where the expert lived and finally found him at night after yelling his name near his home. Xi and the expert talked until midnight and Xi finally persuaded the man to work in Zhengding. The expert later created more than 300,000 yuan in revenue for the county within the first year.

In the same year, Xi decided to publish nine ways for recruiting talented personnel, something that was rare at the time and became a headline story in the Hebei Daily.

In Ningde, Fujian, Xi was also practical and realistic. He pooled resources to implement aquaculture of the large yellow croaker, a local specialty, and greatly increased the income of local farmers.

He also ordered Party and government offices to make things convenient for the people. When serving in Fuzhou, he advocated the principle of "special procedures for special issues, and do things now" to make the government more efficient. This principle was attractive to numerous Taiwan enterprises and helped boost the local economy. He also proposed the compilation of two handbooks on government procedures for residents and overseas businesspeople.

In 2000, Xi initiated a move across Fujian to make the government more efficient. He proposed changes in government functions and procedures to reduce the number of matters that require government approval. By the end of 2001, the number was reduced by 40.4 percent, or 606 items.

In 2001, Fujian became the first province in China to enact a policy making government affairs public.

In Zhejiang, Xi stressed provincial development in the fields of public security, the environment, culture, rule of law and the marine economy.

To achieve these goals, he made an individual case study in addition to making overall arrangements. In order to know how the localities were affected by provincial policies, he went five times to a less-developed mountain village called Xiajiang within less than two years.

He also pushed for the construction of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, an icon of cross-sea bridges in China and once the world' s longest cross-sea bridge.

Zhejiang had realized the development targets one by one during Xi's tenure there. The province had the highest rating in ecology and the environment among all provincial-level regions in 2005. In 2006, 94.77 percent of the people were satisfied with the province's public security, making Zhejiang one of the safest provinces in the country.

During Xi's tenure in Zhejiang, the province's GDP exceeded 1 trillion yuan in 2004, GDP per capita exceeded 3,000 U.S. dollars in 2005 and stood at nearly 4,000 U.S. dollars in 2006. The province ranked fourth in sustainable development in 2006, next to Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin.

Furthermore, all the province's poverty-stricken counties and townships shook off poverty during the period.

In 2007, Xi was appointed secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee.

Within a month of his appointment, Xi conducted research on the people' s livelihood, development, the Shanghai World Expo, and the fight against corruption. The ninth Shanghai municipal congress of the CPC was successfully held, which invigorated local officials, rebuilt Shanghai's image and set forth a blueprint for Shanghai for the next five years.