Xi calls for bolstering reform, development

Meeting highlights stabilizing economic growth, adjusting structures

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, called on Wednesday for further efforts to prevent and eliminate major problems in the nation's reform and development against the backdrop that uncertainties and instabilities are on the rise.

Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while presiding over a key meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform. He is the director of the committee.

Saying China is facing profound changes in its reform and development against the backdrop of increasing external uncertain and unstable factors, Xi said the country must maintain a strategic focus.

Substantial and resolute efforts must be made to prevent major contradictions and outstanding problems through coordinated planning and targeted measures to make reform better serve the country's economic and social development, Xi said.

The meeting reviewed and approved a series of official documents including a guideline on innovation and improving macro-regulation, as well as a guideline on strengthening opening-up and cooperation in innovation capacity.

The meeting called for taking the supply-side structural reform as the main task, making coordinated efforts to stabilize economic growth, promoting reforms, readjusting the economic structure, improving people's livelihoods, preventing risks, and ensuring social stability, according to a statement issued after the meeting.

The strategic guiding role of national development planning should be leveraged to improve coordination mechanisms for economic policies such as finance, currency, employment, industry, and regional development to ensure the nation's economic development stays within a reasonable range, the statement said.

The meeting highlighted the importance of strengthening innovative capabilities as well as opening-up and cooperation in this regard, and called for improving the services and environment for opening-up and cooperation so that development is promoted through opening-up, innovation is advanced through reforms and win-win results are achieved through cooperation, it said.

Tough and newly emerging problems should be resolved through deepening reforms, the statement said, adding that the capability of dealing with challenges and preventing risks should be intensified.

The meeting required Shanxi province, a coal-abundant area in North China, to conduct pilot reforms in its energy industry and take the lead in the whole country in areas such as promoting clean and low-carbon energy use and enhancing innovation in energy technologies, it said.

Efforts should be stepped up to build a higher-level, higher-quality food security system that is more efficient and more sustainable to guarantee the nation's grain reserves, the statement said.