Letter: Xi encourages students to step up exchanges

For Seabelo Tumpane, who is about to return to her hometown in Botswana after obtaining a master's degree from a university in Jiangsu province, a letter from President Xi Jinping is the best thing to have happened to commemorate the two years she has spent in China.

In a recent letter replying to Tumpane and 36 other international students pursuing master's degrees in auditing at Nanjing Audit University, Xi encouraged them to use auditing as a window to better understand China and make contributions to deepen the friendship and cooperation between China and their own countries.

"We really appreciated that. Thank you, President Xi," Tumpane said.

Tumpane worked as an external auditor for the Supreme Audit Institution in Botswana before coming to China in 2021 for the international master's program in auditing.

Launched in 2016, the program has since provided training to more than 280 people working for auditing agencies in 76 countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Graduates from the program have since returned to their countries and continued to engage in auditing.

"The first thing that I learned in China was the use of technology (in auditing). I found technology here very advanced, and I feel that our countries can also adopt the technologies that China uses," Tumpane said.

The idea of writing a letter to the Chinese president came up after the international students visited Lan­kao county in Henan province in April.

During the trip, the students got to see how China's progress in auditing has helped in poverty alleviation. In the once-impoverished county, they learned how the Communist Party of China has led people to combat poverty and boost local development.

The students, from 18 countries, told Xi in their letter that they would keep in mind their experiences in China, cherish their emotional connections with China forever, and strive to act as ambassadors in enhancing friendship between China and their own countries.

In the reply letter, Xi expressed the hope that the students would step up exchanges and mutual learning with their Chinese counterparts.

He also said that China has established a socialist auditing system with Chinese characteristics after years of exploration, and a centralized, comprehensive and efficient auditing supervision system has been formed.

Sunday Francisco Moloseni, from Malawi, got admitted to the program in September. "I was greatly motivated by Xi's reply letter," he said, adding that he wishes to take home to Malawi the excellent experience of Chinese auditing.

Moloseni said he was impressed by how China is utilizing big data in auditing, which is still a new area in his country. "With the help of big data technologies, auditors can save a lot of time by quickly identifying possible problems," he said.

Bubacarr M. Jallow said he learned a lot about Chinese culture, people, food and everything else about the country after coming to China in December from Gambia.

"It (the reply) was great news. We were not expecting it to come so soon. We are very appreciative of it because this is one of a kind. I believe we will use this opportunity to take back home what we have learned here and then share it with our people," he said.

Tumpane said she enjoys talking to the Chinese people, who are always very accommodating, and she expects relations between her country and China to grow further through people-to-people exchanges.

Yao Jinxiang, an assistant researcher at the China Institute of International Studies' Institute of Developing Countries, said, "A severe shortage of skilled personnel is the most pressing issue faced by developing countries in their current industrialization and modernization efforts."

Therefore, a key aspect of China's cooperation with other developing countries is to help them cultivate technical talent, he said.

Yao said that such cooperation is part of China's efforts to implement the Global Development Initiative, which aims to solve the pressing problems that developing countries face in areas such as poverty alleviation, green development and the digital economy.

In the long run, the experience in China will also enable the technical experts or officials from foreign countries to understand China through their own eyes instead of through Western propaganda against China, Yao added.