People's Daily, China's leading newspaper, publishes an editorial Thursday hailing the convocation of the Third Annual Session of China's top political consultative conference on the same day.

The year 2004 was a year in which the people of all ethnicities in China have made great successes in building a relatively affluent society in an all-round way, says the editorial, underscoring that "The National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has firmly adhered to the two major themes of unity and democracy and scored new achievements in various fields since its previous session held a full year ago."

CPPCC has been growing and maturing together with the People's Republic over the past half century and, with concerted efforts with the people throughout China, it has made due contributions in making China prosperous, the Chinese people happy and in reunifying the nation, the editorial says. Practice has fully proven that China's basic political system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China suits China's specific national conditions and it is a basic political system with Chinese characteristics, and therefore CPPCC represents an essential organizational form to accomplish this basic political system.

In 2005, a crucial year for China to fulfill the Tenth Five-year Plan (2001-2005) and to go on advancing toward the lofty goal of building a better-of society in a comprehensive way, the CPPCC National Committee is called on to further improve their work and assist the CPC and the Chinese government in a range of fields, including uniting patriotic forces worldwide to resolutely oppose "Taiwan independence" and promoting reunification of the motherland and enhancing friendly exchanges and cooperation with people all over the world.

The main functions of the CPPCC, a patriotic united front organization of the Chinese people, are to conduct political consultation, exercise democratic supervision and take part in the discussions and the handling of state affairs, says the People's Daily editorial.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2005)