After nearly 40 years of reform and opening up, China's social productivity has increased significantly, President Xi Jinping said at a high-level workshop in preparation for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at the workshop attended by provincial and ministerial officials on Wednesday and Thursday.

Getting hold of some important points to boost the entire work is a requirement of materialist dialectics, and also the method the CPC has long advocated and used, said Xi.

Since the reform and opening up nearly 40 years ago, the people's living standards have been greatly improved, and their desire for a better life is ever stronger, he said.

Therefore, the people's demands are increasingly diversified: from better education to higher incomes, from more stable jobs to more reliable social insurance, higher quality of medical services, more comfortable living conditions, more beautiful environment and richer cultural life, Xi said.p China began reform and opening up in 1978. Last year, the proportion of China's GDP in the world economy stood at about 15 percent, GDP per capita reached 53,980 yuan (8,011 U.S. dollars), and the number of rural people living in poverty dropped to 43.35 million.