Stabilizing economy to be major government task

A Party leadership meeting has underlined the priority of stabilizing the country's economy for this year's government work, urging stronger measures to implement macroeconomic-control policies.

The meeting on Friday of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, chaired by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, also emphasized the need to prevent and mitigate financial risks and ensure financial stability.

Participants in the meeting discussed the draft Government Work Report, which the State Council will submit for deliberation to the upcoming annual session of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, according to a news release after the meeting. Two reports about the Party's inspection work were also discussed at the meeting.

Regarding this year's work for the government, the meeting participants said priority should be given to ensuring the stability of the country's economy and, on that basis, making progress.

Efforts should be made to intensify reforms to stimulate the vitality of market players, they said, adding that an innovation-driven development strategy must be further implemented.

The participants underscored the need to expand higher-level opening-up to ensure steady development of foreign capital and international trade. They added that efforts should be made to prevent and defuse financial risks to avoid any occurrence of serious systemic risks.

The participants called for stronger measures to carry out the strategy of expanding domestic demand, advancing regional integration development and promoting the new type of urbanization.

While emphasizing the importance of agricultural production, they urged promoting rural vitalization in all respects.

The participants called for continuously improving ecological conservation and bolstering green and low-carbon development. They called for concrete steps to protect and improve people's well-being and strengthen social governance in an innovative way.

They also stressed the need to strengthen the government's governing capability, saying the work style of bureaucracy and formality must be abandoned.

The centralized and unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee over the country's financial work must be strengthened in order to unswervingly pursue a financial development path with Chinese characteristics, they said.

While calling for improving the systems of overseeing the use of power, law enforcement and the Party's disciplinary punishment in the financial sector, they said efforts should be made to give punishments in corruption cases while dealing with financial risks.