Zhou Yongkang stresses improved community administration

Zhou Yongkang, a senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Friday urged grassroots officials to improve and innovate community administration and service to ensure social harmony and stability.

"The key for enhancing and innovating social management and maintaining social harmony and stability is tamping the foundation at the grassroots level, especially by building good urban and rural communities," said Zhou, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

"We should build a harmonious and stable country by ensuring harmony and stability in each community," he said.

Zhou made the call when meeting with a delegation from Shanghai before they delivered a report publicizing the story of Yang Zhaoshun, a local community Party chief who has been hailed as a role model for community administrative staff.

All community administrative staff should learn from Yang's exemplary loyalty to the CPC and the Chinese people as well as his community administration experiences gained through practical innovation and exploration, Zhou said.

He urged community administrative staff to offer better services and improve their capabilities of maintaining social harmony and stability in order to build urban and rural communities into happy and harmonious homes for local residents.

As the Party chief in Shanghai's Zitengyuan community over the past 13 years, Yang, 55, has explored ways to better serve local residents in resolving disputes, helping the poor, facilitating and educating ex-convicts and enriching people's cultural life.

Through years of efforts, the community, which is home to many migrant and laid-off workers and poor residents, has been gone from a place with disturbed social order into a well-known peaceful and harmonious community in Shanghai.