I read an article on your newspaper titled "Reporters given chance to shine after blast," in which the author interestingly proposes that local officials should "go back to school and learn how to interact with the media." The article was published a few days after the deadly explosion in Tianjin, during which time local officials were blamed for failing to provide accurate information to the public. As a media professional who has been on the frontline of reporting, I think the "school" should be built as soon as possible.

What we see today is how government officials skillfully deploy political jargon in speeches but fumble for a proper answer to a simple media query, or how they are inactive to assist journalists and photographers at the scenes but slow-wittedly disregard the fact that even without reporters being allowed to do their job, the public can find the news through millions of ways such as social media.

The times have changed, but they didn't change. With the sometimes clumsy handling of a crisis or emergency, there usually comes an outbreak of mistrust in the government. The root cause is that they have failed to provide necessary information to the public, as many of them stick doggedly to the old mind-set that the more the public learns, the more instability it will result.

But under the new circumstances, everyone could be a reporter by means of the Internet. The sooner these government officials learn about this fact, the quicker they can get the upper hand in governance.

A new training program should be introduced into the education and improvement system for government officials. China has an established mechanism to select governing elites. But for decades, it has paid too much attention to the cultivation of the "hard power" of officials, such as their capabilities of maintaining social stability and promoting economic growth, while the "soft power," such as how to build a smooth channel for communication between officials and society, hasn't been given enough attention.

Administrative and political reform has been highly prioritized by the Chinese government, a breakthrough expected to give a major impetus to China's development. How to win back people's trust is essential to the endeavor, and the key solution lies in tens of thousands of local officials, who need further training in the age of information.

Li Xiaoxian, a freelance commentator based in Shanghai