President Xi Jinping makes a speech to a gathering in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in celebration of Spring Festival, on Thursday. (JU PENG / XINHUA)

President Xi Jinping vowed on Thursday to build China by the end of this year into a moderately prosperous society that is universally acclaimed by the people and stands the test of history. 

In the new year, we will secure victory in completing the building of a moderately prosperous society and win the battle against absolute poverty to realize the first Centenary Goal.

Xi Jinping, president of China

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remark in his address to a gathering in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in celebration of Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year, which falls on Saturday.

"In the new year, we will secure victory in completing the building of a moderately prosperous society and win the battle against absolute poverty to realize the first Centenary Goal," Xi said.

Noting that the millennia-old dream of the Chinese nation to become well-off overall will become reality, Xi called it a significant landmark in the course of the country's realization of the great national rejuvenation.

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The Chinese president extended his festival greetings and best wishes to the people of all ethnic groups throughout the country, to compatriots in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan as well as to overseas Chinese around the world.

He reviewed the achievements China made in the past year despite many internal and external challenges, saying the country kept advancing reform and opening-up for high-quality economic growth, and its economic operation remained within a reasonable range.

Great headway was made in three tough battles — poverty reduction, effective prevention and control of financial risks, and environmental protection — news of scientific and technological innovations kept pouring in, people's livelihoods improved, national defense and military reforms advanced steadily and the country's overall diplomacy bore fruit, Xi said.

The grand celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China has greatly cheered the national spirit and built a strong power of national unity, he added.

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Looking forward, Xi said, China has worked out a strategic blueprint to realize socialist modernization step by step after it has completed the task of building a moderately prosperous society, and from there to build China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful modernized socialist country by the middle of this century.