Disguinshed guests and friends,

It's a great pleasure for me to be here today, celebrating with you the fourth anniversary of the Global Times and the third anniversary of the Global Times Metro Shanghai. It's especially meaningful for this event to be held here in Shanghai, because the first English-language newspaper in China was printed and published in this city. Please allow me to extend my warmest congratulations to the Global Times!

As a professor teaching international journalism, I have been studying the development of English-language newspapers in China for a long time, and many of my students are working as reporters and editors at various English-language news outlets, including the Global Times. Therefore, I have been paying a lot of attention to the English edition of this newspaper.

The vitality of English-language newspapers lies in their influence. As the second nationally published English-language newspaper in China, the Global Times speaks truth to sensitive issues which is very important in China's current media environment. This has enabled the Global Times to become an influential newspaper and a window for the world to understand China, even though it was established only four years ago.

It's difficult to run a newspaper, and even more so to run an English newspaper. I myself have helped establish a English-language newspaper and I know how difficult it is to do so in a Chinese-speaking environment. It requires passion, devotion, courage and persistence, as English papers are often regarded as peripheral in China and has less room for development compared with their Chinese counterparts. Therefore I'd like to salute all the colleagues at the Global Times for your effort.

I'd also like to express my gratitude to the Global Times, for it has been providing professional support to the education of young students devoted to international journalism. Mrs Feng Yu, for example, visited our Songjiang Campus every semester to share her professional experience with the students. She has also invited her colleagues to lecture for us.

At the same time, many of our students have visited the newsroom of the Global Times in Shanghai and interned there, reporting and writing stories for the paper. Thanks to the Global Times, we were able to extend our classroom to the newsroom, and our students had the chance to learn on the job and get hands-on experience that was critical to their future career in journalism. So I sincerely hope we could deepen this kind of partnership in the future.

Today's event is a very good opportunity to review and discuss the four years' journey of the English version of the Global Times. I wish it all the success in the future, and more readers worldwide.

Thank you.