Xi urges Hubei to drive modernization

Promoting cultural relics, innovation, ecology stressed

President Xi Jinping has highlighted the pivotal role of Central China's Hubei province in the nation's modernization drive, calling for greater strides in sci-tech and industrial innovation, ecological conservation and deepening comprehensive reform and opening-up.

Speaking during a fact-finding trip to the province from Monday to Wednesday, Xi stressed the need for the region to forge ahead in the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and to build itself into a strategic fulcrum for the rise of the central region at an early date.

The trip took Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, to the cities of Xiaogan, Xianning and Wuhan, the provincial capital.