The revised charter of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is expected to have a major impact on the work of CPPCC organizations at all levels, Secretary-General of the CPPCC National Committee Zheng Wantong said Friday.

A resolution on the draft amendment to the CPPCC National Committee Charter was adopted when the top advisory body concluded its 10-day annual session Friday.

The CPPCC is the Chinese people's patriotic united front organization, serving as a key mechanism for multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and a major manifestation of socialist democracy.

Under the banner of the CPPCC come China's elite entrepreneurs, business people, experts and scholars, and literary and art workers.

In an interview with Xinhua, Zheng said the promulgation of the amended charter will help strengthen and improve the CPC leadership over the CPPCC organizations and give scope to the role of China's political system and political party system in term of their characteristics and advantages, and help maintain and expand the common political foundation of the CPPCC's participating parties, organizations and celebrities of various ethnicities and from all walks of life, and exert to consolidate and develop the patriotic united front.

According to Zheng, the most important new contents of the revised charter include "the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under CPC leadership is a basic political system in China," and "unity and democracy are the two major themes of the CPPCC."

To adapt itself to the country's new situation, the revised charter absorbs a series of important contents concerning "Three Represents"; "promoting a coordinated development of socialist material and political civilization, and social ethical and cultural civilization"; "consolidating and developing the public-ownership economy, and encouraging, supporting and guiding the growth of the non-public sector economy"; and "making concerted efforts for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

It also covers such crucial contents as helping spread and implement the CPC's policies toward ethnicities, religions and intellectuals, Zheng added.

The CPPCC Charter, first created in 1954, underwent four overhauls respectively in 1978, 1982, 1994 and 2000, before its latest amendment, which Zheng said was made under the leadership of the CPC, in a democratic process and in strict compliance with related procedures.

(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2004)