President Hu Jintao made a three-day visit to the remote northwestern province of Qinghai this week to meet laid-off workers, poor students and farmers, state media reported yesterday.

In the latest attempt by the central government to show its concern for common people, Mr Hu promised more measures to raise the standard of living in rural areas but did not give specifics.

After a decade of building up trade and political ties abroad, the Communist leadership says it wants to focus on spreading prosperity to hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the countryside, who have missed out on China's 20-year-old economic boom.

Mr Hu talked to farmers in the poverty-stricken village of Dongjiagou about the abolition of the agriculture tax this year and visited primary school students who have been exempted from paying tuition and textbook fees, Xinhua said.

The president "explained to villagers in detail the government's policies to support agriculture and rural development, stressing that more intensive policies will be formulated for the building of a socialist new countryside", Xinhua said.