Xi urges further 'mass line' efforts

BEIJING - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday called for further efforts to implement the "mass line" campaign designed to strengthen ties between the people and the Communist Party of China (CPC).

In a videophone conference on plans for the second batch of the campaign, Xi urged the Party to capitalise on its learnings from the first batch, solving problems concerning people's immediate interests and improving work styles in the grassroots so as to benefit the people.

The "mass line" initiative was launched in June 2013, with the aim of making government more accessible to the general population, while cleaning up four undesirable work styles - formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance.

Xi said the first batch of the campaign achieved important results, helping Party members and cadres to strengthen their communist ideology and contain the spread of undesirable work styles. It also led to improvements in social morality.

After the campaign was launched, the CPC issued a series of detailed policies to regulate government spending and official's personal behavior in various fields. Those efforts have been endorsed by the people and praised by those inside and outside of the Party.

Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli also attended the conference, which was presided over by Liu Yunshan.