Xiongan should get more room to act on innovation

The building of the Xiongan New Area must focus on the goal of sparing Beijing of functions unrelated to its status as the national capital, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said on Friday.

Xi, also president of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remark at the third meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform. Xi is director of the committee.

The Xiongan New Area should be granted more independent power in such areas as innovation-driven development, urban administration and public services to support it to deepen overall reform and boost opening-up, according to a statement released after the meeting.

The Xiongan New Area should be built into a model for the whole country to pursue high-quality growth, said the statement. The Xiongan New Area, about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing, is the third new area of national significance after the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and Shanghai's Pudong New Area.

During his visit to Anxin county, which is part of the new area, in February 2017, Xi called for "world vision, international standards, Chinese characteristics and high goals" in the planning and construction of the Xiongan New Area.

A guideline on supporting the Xiongan New Area to deepen overall reform and opening-up was adopted at the meeting on Friday.

The meeting highlighted the importance of building civilization practice centers for the new era, which the statement said is expected to encourage rural villagers to engage in building socialist modernization.

The rules on education training agencies outside schools were discussed at the meeting, which proposed to ease the academic burden of primary and middle school students.

It's an important project for the Party and government to deepen reform of preschool education, and measures must be taken to meet the people's demand to have access to education for younger children, according to the statement.

More measures should be taken to promote consumption, cultivate markets in key consuming areas, create a safe environment for consumption and improve the people's consumption capacity, thus increasing the role of consumption in promoting economic growth, said the statement.

During the meeting, the members of the committee also discussed such issues as protecting cultural relics, enhancing supervision over statistics and streamlining administrative procedures.