President sends festive greetings to seniors

Elderly residents take part in an art class at the day-care center in a citizen service station in Jiaxing sub-district, Shanghai's Hongkou district, on Aug 30, 2020. (Photo by Zhu Xingxin/chinadaily.com.cn)

President Xi Jinping has underlined the importance of carrying out the national strategy to cope with an aging society and enabling China's seniors to share the outcomes from the nation's reform and development.

In an instruction published on Wednesday, Xi also extended festive greetings to the nation's seniors ahead of the Double Ninth Festival, China's Seniors' Day, which falls on Thursday.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, called for Party committees and governments at various levels to attach great importance to work related to the aging population.

It is important to integrate the concept of a positive and healthy aging process into the whole process of economic and social development and bolster innovation at the institutional level, policy supply and fiscal input, he said.

He stressed the need to improve work related to the elderly, reinforce work at the grassroots level and improve the social security, elderly services and health support systems.

The president also called for greater efforts to promote the traditional virtue of showing respect to seniors, carrying out preferable policies toward them, protecting their legitimate interests and enabling them to play a positive role.

China's population has been aging at a faster pace in recent years. The latest national census data showed that 18.7 percent of the nation's 1.41 billion people are now age 60 or older.