Chinese President Xi Jinping (third from right) visits a local family in Huanghuatan community, Gulang County, northwest China's Gansu Province, August 21, 2019. /Xinhua Photo

Chinese President Xi Jinping underscored efforts to push forward poverty alleviation, promote high-quality development, enhance environmental protection, and ensure and improve people's well-being during an inspection tour of northwest China's Gansu Province this week. 

"Resolute efforts must be made to conquer the last fortresses of poverty," Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said at a meeting with provincial officials on Thursday in Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu.

Xi urged local authorities to intensify efforts to fight against poverty. When food and clothing are provided, priorities should be shifted to guaranteeing nine-year compulsory education for children from poor families as well as basic medical needs and better living conditions, he added.

In particular, local authorities should focus their poverty alleviation efforts on extremely poor areas, he said, calling on them to solve each problem faced by each poor resident in each household and each village.

China has pledged to eradicate absolute poverty in rural areas nationwide by 2020.

Xi also called for improvement in infrastructure in both urban and rural areas across the province. He said Gansu should strive to develop high value-added agriculture with local characteristics, coordinate the protection and exploitation of its tourist resources, and fortify the foundation of high-quality development.

Meanwhile, Xi underscored the need to protect the environment, develop the ecological industry, and build an ecological security barrier in China's western region. 

To ensure and improve people's well-being, the province should prioritize public service programs and tackle problems of significant public concern, he said.

The meeting was held at the end of Xi's four-day tour in Gansu, where he visited the Mogao Grottoes, the Dunhuang Academy, the Jiayuguan Pass, the Memorial Hall of the West Route Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, a vocational school, a horse ranch, a rural community, an afforestation area, a new community of rural residents relocated out of ecological concerns, a primary school and a pumping station in a number of cities and counties.