Chongqing urged to boost modernization

President says work of Party, government aimed to ensure people live a happier life

President Xi Jinping has called on Chongqing, China’s largest municipality in terms of both land area and population, to bear in mind the principle that cities should be built by the people and for the people, and to actively explore new ways for the modernization of governance in super-large cities.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks during a three-day inspection tour of the municipality that started on Monday.

The trip, his third to the city since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012, took him to a logistics park, a renovated urban residential compound and a digital urban operation and governance center, among others.

While visiting a community in Jiulongpo district on Monday, Xi said that the renovation of old urban residential communities is among the priorities of the country’s urban renewal efforts and also a livelihood project. The renovation must preserve historical memory and distinctive features while addressing the real concerns of residents, he said, urging efforts to summarize the good practices that can be applied.

The community was originally built between the 1950s and the 1990s and has 55 buildings. In early 2022, a project was launched to renovate houses covering 110,000 square meters and demolish over 40,000 sq m of dilapidated residences.

Before he left, Xi told the residents who gathered to bid farewell to him that the people’s wellbeing is of the utmost importance in Chinese modernization, and all the work of the Party and the government is intended to ensure that the people live a happier life.

After hearing work reports on Wednesday from senior officials of the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee and the municipal government, Xi urged Chongqing to accelerate its pace of building a smart city, build an intelligent center for urban operation and governance, and refine its mechanisms and systems to make urban governance more intelligent, efficient and precise.

He also stressed the need to vigorously promote integrated urban-rural development in Chongqing, where urban, rural, mountainous and reservoir areas coexist and there are gaps among them in terms of development.

As China is advancing highquality development, Xi called on Chongqing to further deepen reform and opening-up across the board and make its own contribution to advancing Chinese modernization.

Noting Chongqing’s role as a key strategic fulcrum for the development of China’s western region in the new era, Xi said the municipality should play a bigger role in promoting the interconnected development of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor in the western region.

He also urged the city to promote alignment with high-standard international economic and trade rules and foster a worldclass business environment that is market-oriented, law-based and internationalized.