The reforms China is undertaking include economic and political restructuring, Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday.

Reforms on the economic system and the modernization drive could not succeed without political restructuring, Wen said when delivering a government work report at the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature.

Wen vowed to develop socialist democracy and effectively safeguard the democratic rights of people as "masters of the country."

He also said China will further expand primary-level democracy and strengthen primary-level self-governing bodies so that people can better participate in the management of local affairs.

The legislature is to amend the Electoral Law, adopted in 1953, during the session. The amendment aims at ensuring equal electoral rights between urban and rural residents.

The last amendment to the Electoral Law in 1995 stipulates that each rural deputy to the people's congress, at any level, is to represent a population four times that of an urban deputy. The ratio was eight to one before 1995.

Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the NPC session, told a press conference Thursday that "conditions are ripe" to adopt the same ratio as the structure of China's population changed with the urbanization drive.

(Xinhua News Agency March 5, 2010)