The country will press ahead with the reform of its income distribution system to reverse the growing wealth gap, Party General Secretary Hu Jintao said yesterday in a keynote speech at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

"We will increase transfer payments, intensify the regulation of incomes through taxation, break business monopolies, create equal opportunities and overhaul income distribution practices with a view to gradually reversing the growing income disparity," he told more than 2,200 delegates to the congress.

Hu's report yesterday officially included the subject of "people's livelihood".