President Jiang Zemin called on the whole Party and the nation to seize the opportunity, press ahead with a pioneering spirit and make unswerving efforts to realize socialist modernization and the great revival of the Chinese nation.

He made the call Tuesday morning at group discussions attended by Zhejiang and Beijing deputies to the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), in session since March 5.

Jiang attributed impressive accomplishments China has made since it began implementing reform and open policies to efforts infour major areas:

-- To unswervingly adhere to the Party's basic policy of centering on economic development, to handle correctly the relationship among reform, development and stability, and to emancipate the mind and seek truth from facts;

-- To persist in carrying out reform aimed at boosting productive forces and to persist in implementing an open policy;

-- To adhere to the principle of giving equal emphasis to creating material wealth on the one hand and promoting cultural and ethical progress on the other;

-- To follow the mass line, respect people's pioneering spirit and bring into full play their initiative and creativity.

"These are all our basic experience that we need to continue touphold," Jiang said, adding that building socialism with Chinese characteristics is a great cause without a parallel in history. To succeed in advancing the great cause, the whole Party and people of different ethnic groups in China must have a correct common ideal and a determination to make unremitting efforts to make further progresses, he said.

China has to tap its own advantages in order to remain invincible in tense international competition, the president said, pointing to a comprehensive utilization of resources, markets, technologies, intellectual resources and mechanisms.

Noting that the eastern and western China each has its own favorable factors, Jiang said the question is to map out development strategies in a true-to-fact manner in a bid to use fully the existing advantages and turn potential advantages into genuine ones.

He urged leading officials to follow the Party's hard-working and down-to-earth style in a united effort to lead the masses of people in doing a good job in implementing economic strategic restructuring, scientific, technological and set-up innovations, state-owned enterprise reform, and carrying out the develop-the-west strategy, as well as advancing both material and socialist ethical and cultural progress.

"Facing the advent of booming modern economy-oriented hi-techs, no progress simply means retrogress. So, we must seize the chance to speed development, and try our utmost to catch up," Jiang said, calling for more intensified efforts for developing hi-techs and attaining leaps and bounds in technological progress.

Moreover, he said, "We should give full scope to the superiority of Communist Party leadership and socialist system, and consciously advance the process in which China's productive forces and relations of production will be made to adapt to and help each other."

At no time can the central status of economic development be wavered and, if other social undertakings are not grasped well simultaneously, economic growth will, in turn, be affected and undermined, he added.

Jiang called for further endeavors to be made on education concerning patriotism, collectivism, socialism, and hard work, so as to perform continuous, new feats in the new century.