President Xi Jinping has called on Guizhou province to promote high-quality development and drive growth by further deepening reform and opening-up comprehensively, saying that the southwestern province should firm up confidence, work hard and take steady steps to advance Chinese modernization.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks as he wrapped up on Tuesday a two-day inspection of the province.

The visit, which came less than a week after the conclusion of the annual sessions of the country's top legislature and national political advisory body, was Xi's third trip to Guizhou since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012.

It took him to a Dong ethnic village in the province's Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture on Monday.

Guizhou is home to diverse ethnic groups and cultures, with people of ethnic minority groups accounting for more than 36 percent of its total population. Eighteen ethnic groups such as Han, Miao, Bouyei, Dong and Tujia have lived there since ancient times.

In Zhaoxing Dong village, Xi watched a performance of the grand song of the Dong ethnic group, a form of folk chorus inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, visited a Dong culture exhibition center and inspected a local base of special industry featuring weaving, dyeing and embroidery.

"Stilt houses, ancient villages, intangible cultural heritage instruments, the grand song of the Dong people and batik craftsmanship all embody the unique charm of this ethnic culture — both deeply traditional and remarkably stylish," Xi said.

He expressed the hope that with the support of the Party and the government, the villagers will live better lives, further advance rural vitalization, and contribute to the progress of Chinese modernization.

When sitting around a firepit with villagers at a drum tower, a unique architecture of the Dong ethnic group that serves as a communal gathering spot, Xi said that areas with large ethnic minority populations should preserve their distinctive culture and let it shine through the integrated development of culture and tourism.

Tourism has become a major industry and rural tourism is thriving, Xi said, expressing the hope that the villagers would enjoy greater prosperity with each passing day.

At a work briefing by the provincial authorities on Tuesday in Guiyang, the provincial capital, Xi urged Guizhou to be resolute and bold in exploration, saying that the province should underpin its real economy, strengthen innovation-driven growth and ensure the transformation from old growth drivers to new ones.

Xi also called on the province to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, actively develop strategic emerging industries and enhance its digital economy and new energy sectors.

It is essential for Guizhou to effectively pursue higher-quality economic growth while appropriately increasing economic output, Xi said, stressing the need to protect the ecological environment and transform ecological advantages into developmental advantages.

Xi stressed that the vitality of a region's development is closely related to its business environment.

Guizhou should actively integrate itself into the building of a unified national market, eliminate local protectionism, market fragmentation and "involution-style" competition, and create a stable, fair, transparent and predictable business environment, he said.

Noting that openness is also an important aspect of the business environment, Xi said that Guizhou should seize the opportunity presented by the development of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and proactively align itself with the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic zone, to move faster toward all-around opening-up.

Since the adoption of the Western Development Strategy at the beginning of the 21st century, Guizhou's GDP has increased more than twentyfold and the total length of its highways exceeds 9,000 kilometers.

In recent years, the Belt and Road Initiative and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor have brought more opportunities for the inland province to open to the rest of the world.

In the first 11 months of 2024, the total trade of goods in the province reached 68.62 billion yuan ($9.5 billion), representing a year-on-year increase of 10.2 percent. Exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries and solar products, known as the "new three items", grew 77.4 percent compared with the previous year, official data showed.