Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is scheduled to chat with Internet surfers on 15:00 Saturday at two state news portals.

The two major portals, www.xinhuanet.com and www.gov.cn, will jointly interview Premier Wen, which will be live shown in both texts and videos.

The Xinhua news website, www.xinhuanet.com, invites netizens to raise questions to Premier Wen at the Development Forum, forum.xinhuanet.com, and the Chinese premier is expected to answer some of these questions.

The website advises that each question should be no more than 100 Chinese characters to ensure smooth on-line flow.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, the number of Chinese netizens by January surpassed 300 million, making up 23.8 percent of the population, which ranked the first in the world.

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited last June Qiangguo Forum, a popular virtual forum under the People's Daily of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and chatted with the public in four minutes. Hu said he got to know people's concerns through netizens.

In January 2007, Hu, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, urged officials in a lecture attended by members of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, to improve their Internet literacy and use it well so as to "improve the art of leadership".

Premier Wen also said he used the Internet to listen to public opinions and suggestions.

Netizens usually proffered tens of thousands of questions and advices for Wen at several Chinese news portals, which organized special bulletins ahead of the legislature and the top advisory body's annual sessions.

Source: Xinhua