Number of Ethnic Minority Cadres Soaring upAs China is a unified, multi-ethnic socialist country, to nurture and select ethnic minority cadres has always been an important component of the work on nurturing cadres of the Communist Party of China (CPC), according to a symposium on promoting ethnic minority officials concluded in Beijing Tuesday.According to official figures, by the end of 1999, China had more than 2.824 million ethnic minority officials, or 6.9 percent of the national total, compared with 834,000 and 4.8 percent, respectively, in 1978. Since 1993 the number of minority nationality cadres has increased by 452 thousand, with an average growth rate 3 percent annually, 7.7 percent higher over the same period nationwide in 7 years. The number of technical personnel from minority nationalities also enlarged, especially in the regions of Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Ningxia, and Xingjiang. In 1999, there are 1898 thousand such technical workers across the country, an increase of 355 thousand over 1993. As leaders at all levels, these cadres are acting as the backbone in the political, economic and social development of minority regions. The symposium participants agreed that to cultivate more ethnic minority cadres is vital to the strategy of developing the vast, underdeveloped western part of the nation, which is home to a large population of ethnic minority groups. Party committees and governments at all levels are urged to put the issue of fostering ethnic minority officials on their work agenda and to find new ways for selecting and assigning these people to official posts. The symposium was sponsored by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee. Attending the meeting were Zeng Qinghong, an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, and Wang Zhaoguo, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and head of the United Front Work Department of CPC Central Committee. |
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