BEIJING, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has urged efforts to accelerate the development of new productive forces and firmly promote high-quality development.

Xi made the remarks on Wednesday while presiding over a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

He stressed that high-quality development is an unyielding principle in the new era.

"Developing new productive forces is the intrinsic requirement and an important focus of promoting high-quality development, and it's necessary to continue to well leverage innovation to speed up the development of new productive forces," Xi said.

Noting that promoting high-quality development has become the consensus and conscious action of the whole Party and society in the new era, Xi said there are still many factors restricting high-quality development, which must be guided by a new productivity theory.

With innovation playing the leading role, new productive forces mean advanced productivity that is freed from traditional economic growth mode and productivity development paths, features high-tech, high efficiency and high quality, and comes in line with the new development philosophy, said Xi.

New productive forces are driven by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading, taking the improvement of workers, means of labor, subjects of labor and their optimal combinations as its basic connotation, and a substantial increase in total factor productivity as its core hallmark, Xi said.

Marked by innovation, and with high quality as the key, new productive forces are advanced productivity in essence, Xi said.

Xi pointed out that sci-tech innovation can generate new industries, new models and new growth drivers, which are the core elements of the development of new productive forces.

Xi called for strengthening sci-tech innovation, especially original and disruptive innovation, accelerating the realization of high-level self-reliance in science and technology, and fighting hard for breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields, so that original and disruptive sci-tech innovation outcomes can keep emerging for fostering new growth drivers of new productive forces.