The Communist Party of China (CPC) will continue to take economic development as the top priority in governing the country and rejuvenating the nation, says a document on improving the governance capability of the Party.

"We must persist in making development the top priority in governing the country and rejuvenating the nation and constantly improve the Party's capability in running the socialist market economy," says a decision on enhancing the Party's governing capabilities, which was made public Sunday.

The decision, adopted on Sept. 19 at the Fourth Plenum of the 16th CPC Central Committee, says the foremost task in the capacity building is to improve the Party's capability to lead the development cause.

The Party should firmly establish the strategic principle of seizing the opportunities to accelerate development and unswervingly persist in the central task of economic construction, it says.

The overall idea and major strategies for China's development up to the year 2020 must be established in a scientific way and study must be accelerated on the formation of medium- and long-term plans for national economic and social development, it says.

The Party will adhere to the scientific concept of development that emphasizes putting people first and comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development, so as to better push forward economic and social development.

An effective system to carry out the scientific concept of development should be established, along with a system to evaluate economic and social development that embodies the requirement of the concept.

In formulating guiding principles and policies, attention should be paid to strengthening the weak links, particularly to addressing the issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

The documents also calls for efforts to implement the strategies to develop the western region, invigorate the old industrial bases in the northeast and promote the rise of the central region, while helping old revolutionary bases, areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, border areas and other less developed areas to accelerate development.

Attention should also be paid to expanding employment and reemployment and improving the social security system, while promoting the development of education, science and technology, culture, health, sports and other social undertakings, as well as family planning, resource conservation, environmental protection and production safety.

The Party must adhere to the direction of socialist market economic reform and resolutely remove all concepts and inappropriate mechanisms that obstruct development, the document says.

The Party should correctly handle the relationship between keeping public ownership as the mainstay of the economy and promoting the development of the non-public sector, firmly consolidate and develop public ownership and encourage the state-owned economy to play the dominant role, while unswervingly encouraging, supporting and guiding the development of the private sector so that they could promote and benefit each other.

The document says the Party encourages certain regions and people to get rich first, and pays attention to social fairness while taking measures to address the excessively wide income gap among different regions and different groups of people, so as to gradually realize common affluence of all the people.

The Party will also pay attention to properly handling the relationship between market mechanism and macro-economic control, the relationship between the Central Government and local governments, and the relationship between reform, development and stability.

The document stresses that efforts should be made to uphold the basic state policy of opening to the outside world and improving the level of opening up in an all-round way.

It also urges improvement in the work style of the Party in leading economic work in line with the requirements of the socialist market economy.

Party committees at various levels should support the government to fully perform its duties according to law, it says.