Zhang Chunxian, the Communist Party chief in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Thursday urged local officials to handle people's suggestions and appeals in a timely manner, after hearing from the public through his microblog.

Zhang launched his personal microblog on March 2 in a bid to interact with the public. At that time, he was in Beijing to attend the annual parliamentary session.

By Thursday, he has received more than 10,000 comments from other microblog users, about one fifth of whom voiced different opinions regarding Xinjiang's development and the standards of living of the public.

Zhang required all government departments to make public their responses and solutions to these appeals and suggestions through the regional government's website on Saturday.

Microblogging could be a convenient and efficient channel for gauging public opinion, Zhang said, adding that he wanted people to know that their problems could be solved.

His microblog on www.qq.com, a popular Internet portal in China, has attracted more than 290,000 followers as of Thursday. The microblog will be closed from early Friday.

Many fans posted comments calling for improved medical conditions, working environments and salaries, as well as fairer distribution of income. Some of them also made proposals to tackle such problems.

China now has around 450 million Internet users. Two popular microblog websites, www.qq.com and www.sina.com, have recently announced that they each have more than 100 million microblog users.