Chinese President Meets National Model Workers

Chinese President Meets National Model Workers

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Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that he hoped the working class and other laboring people will hold high the great banner of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory, rally more closely around the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and make more significant achievements in the new century.

Jiang said this at a gathering here Saturday attended by some 100 national model workers. He extended greetings to workers on the eve of May 1, the International Labor Day.

He said that the working class and other laboring people have played an important role in China's reform, opening up, and modernization drive, stressing that wholehearted relying on the working class is a political advantage of the Party and the country.

All work of the Party and the country is based on safeguarding the economic, political and cultural rights and interests of the working class and other laboring people.

He noted that officials at all levels should be clear that it is the essential requirement of socialist democracy to guarantee that the working class and all other laboring people can exercise their rights of administering the country, the economy and social affairs.

Trade unions are a bridge linking the Party with the workers, he said. Party committees and governments at all levels should pay great attention to the work of trade unions, and create proper conditions for them to fulfill their functions.

Vice-president Hu Jintao also made a speech at the gathering.