A key meeting presided over by President Xi Jinping on Friday highlighted reforms of the system for evaluating scientific and technological achievements and called for concrete steps to encourage researchers to stay focused on creating more innovations.

While presiding over the 19th meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform, Xi, who is the committee's director, and is also the general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, reiterated the importance of stepping up efforts to realize self-sufficiency and independence in science and technology.

He underlined the need to leverage the role of the assessment of scientific and technological achievements, abide by the law of technological innovation and inspire initiative among scientific staff.

Participants in the meeting said efforts should be made to reform and improve the system of rewarding those who make scientific and technological breakthroughs. Emphasis should be placed on rewarding scientists who make creative contributions and frontline technical workers, they said.

The meeting's participants also called for accelerating the pace of translating scientific and technological achievements into actual production using solid financial and investment support, and also called for advancing the building of a higher-level market for the trade of technologies.

Evaluation of the innovative capabilities of higher-education institutions, scientific research institutes and State-owned enterprises should be partly based on their performance in the transfer and use of scientific and technological achievements, they added.

The meeting reviewed and approved a series of documents including a guideline on further reducing the burden on primary and middle-school students during compulsory education, regulating off-campus training and instituting a pilot program for deepening medical service pricing reforms. It also approved a guideline for reform of environmental protection compensation and a guideline strengthening protection of historical and cultural relics during rural and urban construction.

During the meeting, Xi highlighted the importance of compulsory education in overall national education, and urged efforts to regulate off-campus training for primary and middle-school students.

In terms of medical service price reforms, Xi stressed the not-for-profit nature of the basic healthcare system, and called for a reasonable compensatory mechanism to stabilize people's expectations for price adjustments. Efforts should be made to ensure the healthy and sustainable development of public hospitals while improving the quality of medical services, he added.