Children play at the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on July 14, 2021. [Photo by Wei Xiaohao/chinadaily.com.cn]

Addressing a central conference on ethnic affairs in Beijing recently, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, clarified the Party's policy of strengthening and improving the work related to ethnic affairs, and emphasized that the Party should focus on building a stronger sense of community among all ethnic groups in order to promote high-quality ethnic affairs work in the new era.

The conference was the fifth on ethnic affairs since the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978. The previous one was held in 2014.

The history of China is one of integrating all ethnic groups into the Chinese nation and all ethnic groups working together to create, develop and strengthen the nation. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party in 2012, the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core, has strictly adhered to socialism with Chinese characteristics to address ethnic issues, and developed ways to strengthen and improve this work, helping the country make new and historic achievements in promoting ethnic unity, and ensuring ethnic minority groups lead a moderately prosperous life in all aspects together with the rest of the nation.

Forging a sense of community is a prerequisite for safeguarding the fundamental interests of all ethnic groups in the country. The Chinese nation is a huge family of different ethnic groups, so the relationship among different ethnic groups is the same as that among different members of a family.

To forge a strong sense of community, China must correctly handle the relationship between commonalities and differences, and respect the differences among its ethnic groups. It should guide the ethnic groups to put the interests of the Chinese nation first and uphold unity so as to improve people's livelihoods.

To forge a strong sense of community, the country should guide the people of all ethnic groups to embrace the concept of a community that shares weal and woe.

The core of strengthening ethnic unity is to accelerate the economic and social development of all ethnic groups and promote their common prosperity and development.

The country should improve differentiated regional support policies, increase support for infrastructure construction and industrial restructuring in areas where ethnic minority groups are concentrated and help all ethnic groups to jointly move toward modernization.