A New Year is a new beginning. With this year's Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, just around the corner, China is also well prepared for the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) period (2021-2025) and the centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

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Ahead of the Spring Festival, Chinese President Xi Jinping extended Spring Festival greetings to all Chinese Wednesday at a reception in Beijing and called for a good start in boosting the country's development during the 14th FYP period so as to celebrate the Party's centenary with outstanding achievements.

Ready for a new journey in the 14th FYP period

Facts have once again proven that the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics has incomparable vitality and creativity, Xi said.

As long as the entire Party and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups rally closely around the CPC Central Committee, there is no difficulty that cannot be overcome, he said.

The year 2021 is crucial to China as the nation is set to achieve its first centenary goal within the set time frame – to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects – and begin the work towards the second goal, to fully build a modern socialist country.

Stressing the goal of promoting high-quality development, President Xi highlighted the importance of the country's new stage of development, the implementation of this new vision of development, and the construction of a new pattern of development in 2021.

To meet the people's ever-growing needs for a better life, efforts are needed in deepening supply-side structural reform while taking reform and innovation as the fundamental driving force, the Chinese president said.

Consolidating and expanding achievements in epidemic containment and economic and social development are necessary, he added.

Great achievements in 2020 as solid foundation

President Xi also looked back on the past year which he described as "extraordinary" in his New Year speech.

Xi hailed what has achieved in COVID-19 prevention, poverty alleviation, flood prevention, rescue and relief work, and reform and opening-up, and highlighted the country's progress in technology, economy and the Belt and Road construction.

China is one of the most resilient economies amid the ravaging pandemic and global economic slump. The country was among the first to have put the virus under control, to have resumed work and production and to have realized economic stability and recovery, which not only made it the first major economy in the world to register positive growth in 2020 but also brought confidence and hope to others in the world.

On November 23, as southwest China's Guizhou Province cleared all the names on its poverty list, China announced the eradication of absolute poverty and regional poverty.

At a symposium on securing a decisive victory in poverty alleviation in March, President Xi said lifting all rural residents living below the poverty line out of poverty by 2020 is a solemn promise made by the CPC Central Committee and it must be fulfilled on time.