BEIJING -- A central conference on work related to people's congresses was held from Wednesday to Thursday in Beijing.

President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, underlined upholding and improving the people's congress system and continuously enhancing whole-process people's democracy while addressing the event.

The following are some highlights of his remarks:

-- Democracy, a shared value of humanity, is a key tenet unswervingly upheld by the CPC and the Chinese people.

-- Democracy is not an ornament to be used for decoration; it is to be used to solve the problems that the people want to solve.

-- Whether a country is a democracy or not depends on whether its people are really the masters of the country.

-- If the people are awakened only for voting but enter a dormant period soon after, if they are given a song and dance during campaigning but have no say after the election, or if they are favored during canvassing but are left out in the cold after the election, such a democracy is not a true democracy.

-- It is in itself undemocratic to use a single yardstick to measure the rich and varied political systems and examine the diverse political civilizations of humanity from a monotonous perspective.