Most of the houses in the Dongling nature village in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang Province have installed solar photovoltaic panels on their roofs to generate electricity. Photo: cnsphoto

With achieving common prosperity as a long-term goal, China will stick to the central task of economic development and promote high-quality development, while stepping up efforts to improve 1.4 billion people's livelihood, a senior official said on Monday.

Common prosperity is an "essential requirement of socialism" and a "key feature of Chinese-style modernization." It reflects the CPC's commitment to a people-centered development philosophy, Jiang Jinquan, director of the Policy Research Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, told a press conference in Beijing on Monday.

Only socialism has conditions and capability to achieve common prosperity for all, while capitalism seeks maximum interests for capital and therefore couldn't attain real common prosperity, Jiang said.

"We have been endeavoring how to realize common prosperity. Since the reform and opening up, we encourage some regions and people to get rich first and then inspire and help others to become rich and gradually push for common prosperity," he said, noting that the country's valuable experience in poverty alleviation will build a solid foundation for promoting common prosperity.

To realize common prosperity, the nation should first "make a bigger cake" through joint efforts of the people, and then divide and distribute the cake properly through rational institutional arrangements and avoid polarization, according to Jiang.

Achieving common prosperity is a long-term goal, and to realize it "we can neither wait around nor be too hasty", he said. "We should base ourselves on China's realities that it is still a developing country, continue to develop the productive forces by complying with China's basic conditions and principles, and should create and accumulate social wealth continuously in order to steadily enhance people's living standard," he said.

Jiang said that the country will take effective measures to improve the system so as to constantly narrow income gap, and let people feel that the country is making sustainable progress toward achieving common prosperity for all.

The Chinese central government will ramp up efforts to stabilize domestic economy and maintain sound economic momentum, making a big push to ensure stability in six areas for steady economic growth, solve outstanding conflicts and problems and effectively contain potential risks, he said.

"Among major economies, China's overall economic performance is remarkable since the COVID-19 outbreak. Although China's GDP growth rate slows compared with previous years against the backdrop of the pandemic, and disrupted industrial and supply chains, the overall situation remains sound and expectations remains strong. We should have confidence in the economy," Jiang said.

By sticking to solid implementation of pro-employment policies and the development of real economy, the authorities will actively support the development of medium, small and micro-size enterprises to create more jobs, ensure the employment of the youth including college graduates and guide people to create better life through hard work, Jiang said, noting it's a prerequisite for promoting common prosperity.