Roundup-China Focus: Xi eyes future of NE China, stresses role of SOEs

President Xi Jinping has called for fresh efforts to revive China's laggard northeastern region, once a major heavy industrial hub, underlining the importance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the country's development.

Xi made the remarks during an inspection tour to Jilin Province from Thursday to Saturday, where he urged the region to strive for breakthroughs while adapting itself to the new normal of slower economic development.

Stressing the optimization and upgrade of industrial structures, Xi urged the province to step up its efforts to foster emerging industries and boost service industry while intensifying infrastructure construction.

"More efforts should be made to push forward the innovation drive so as to boost the vigor of the entire society in innovation and business start-ups," Xi said, underlining an innovation-backed economic growth mode.

Calling for "saving, efficient, safe and sustainable modern agricultural development," Xi also urged the region to maintain various policies to benefit rural residents, with better efforts to accelerate modern agriculture and boost farmers' incomes.

"People's livelihoods are the compass in our economic and social development. We should consolidate the material basis for improving people's livelihoods while stimulating effective demands with better livelihoods," Xi said, calling for high-precision poverty relief that incorporates efforts from all walks of life.

The president also stressed the role of leading officials at all levels in guiding lower-level officials and citizens to contribute to healthy economic and social development, exerting earnest effort to implement various reform policies and uphold an incorrupt work style.

"Reform plans for key fields should be made, with fast and steady implementation. It's unacceptable to miss reform opportunities or delay its progress by waiting and looking on," Xi warned officials.

IMPORTANCE OF SOEs

Noting that the SOEs are an important force to advance modernization and safeguard people's common interests, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, urged unremitting efforts to ensure SOEs become stronger and more competitive.

Xi stressed the important role of innovation, quality and management in SOE development, saying that reform in SOEs should be conducive to preserving or increasing the value of state-owned capital and help improve the competitiveness of the state-owned economy.

He urged vigorous promotion of the spirit of model workers, safeguarding the legitimate rights of workers and building harmonious labor relations.

At a Yanbian-based company under the pharmaceutical giant Jilin Aodong, Xi inspected products and their manufacturing lines, urging employees to closely track the latest progress in biopharmaceutical field and intensify research to develop more high-tech products.

"Drug safety weighs heavier than mountains. Guaranteeing drug safety concerns technology, management, morality as well as people's morale," Xi said, urging every pharmaceutical company to fully take on its social responsibilities to ensure that "every type of medicine and every tablet is safe and reliable."

While visiting the Changchun Railway Vehicles Co. Ltd, Xi praised a system in which every worker is required to register with their real names during key manufacturing processes so that defects can be backtracked.

Describing the high-speed trains as "a much sought-after commodity" in the country's economic and technological cooperation overseas, Xi urged the equipment manufacturing industry to seize the opportunities to invest more in research and development and build the country into a modern equipment manufacturing power on the world stage.

DEVELOPMENT PILOT ZONE

Xi stressed the importance of a pilot zone in northeast China's Jilin Province and demanded it be built into an example of opening up.

During his inspection tour, Xi visited Yanbian, home to China's largest Korean ethnic minority population and center of the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen Development Pilot Zone.

The pilot zone is of great significance for the opening of border areas and international cooperation in Northeast Asia, he said.

The area is also important for economic restructuring of northeast China, which used to be a major heavy industrial hub but has suffered economic setback for years, he added.

Xi urged the authorities of the pilot zone to carefully plan its development, deploy its resources intensively and efficiently, and build it into an example of opening up in the northeast.

Founded in 2009, the pilot zone aims to advance cross-border cooperation in the Tumen River Delta, which straddles the borders of China, Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

While visiting farmers, Xi stressed the importance of food safety to the country, promising to offer more support to farming areas so that the local economy will improve and farmers can increase their income through developing agriculture.

At the village community center, the president saw villagers rehearsing a traditional dance and stopped to appreciate the performance and take photos with villagers, extending them his best wishes.

He also instructed villages and local governments to preserve the traditions of the Korean ethnic group when planning the development of rural communities. Endi