On Sunday morning in Beijing the Sixth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) got underway.

A major item on the agenda is to study the issue of building a harmonious socialist society and deliberate on a draft of the "resolutions of the CPC Central Committee on major issues regarding the building of a harmonious socialist society."

In general the Party holds that society is currently harmonious but there still existed a number of contradictions and problems impairing social harmony.

"Facing up to these contradictions and working to resolve them with a more positive attitude to increase harmonious factors and reduce disharmonious issues is an important guarantee of realizing China's long-term development goals," said a senior party official at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in July.

This current ongoing session will continue through Wednesday according to a statement issued on September 25 by a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over by Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Committee.

The statement said the draft document should be well composed and provide guidelines for the Party and the nation on building a harmonious socialist society. It said comments and suggestions from Party members and the public should be reflected in the document so as to combine the wisdom of both. 

Political bureau members at the meeting stressed that building a socialist harmonious society must put people first, base all Party and state work on the fundamental interests of the population and meet the growing material and cultural demands of the people.

Serious efforts should be made to promote development, the top priority of the Party, and to coordinate urban, rural, regional, economic and social development, harmonious growth alongside nature, domestic development and opening-up said the statement.

Reform of the socialist market economy must be continued to promote economic, political, cultural and social innovation with energetic improvement to ensure more efficient and open systems were in operation, added the statement. 

Efforts had to be made to improve socialist democratic construction and implement the strategy of the rule of law in the gradual process of building a fair social security system, it continued. 

The meeting emphasized the need to take into consideration the momentum of reform, the speed of development, the people's resilience and to promote and secure harmony with reform, development and stability. 

Stressing that the Party was the key to building a harmonious socialist society the meeting said it must play a leading role in accordance with the principle of governing for the people, outlined the statement. 

The construction would be facilitated along with the improvement of the Party's governance capacity and the campaign to help it stay advanced thus offering a forceful political guarantee for building a harmonious society, it said.

All Party committees should put the work at the top of their agendas and encourage cadres to improve their management of public affairs, coordinating relations of different interest groups, properly handling questions among the people to ensure implementation of Party's policies and principles.

(Xinhua News Agency, CRI October 8, 2006)