A key Party meeting on Friday underlined the need for stronger Party leadership over the financial sector, and urged financial institutions to forestall and defuse financial risks, as well as strengthen reform and innovation in order to ensure the sector's healthy development.

The meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, presided over by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, reviewed a report about the remediation efforts made by the financial institutions subject to a two-month disciplinary inspection launched in mid-October by the 19th CPC Central Committee.

In February, the 25 financial institutions, including the central bank, the banking and insurance regulator, stock exchanges, commercial banks and asset-management companies, were given one-on-one feedback by the 15 inspection teams deployed to conduct the mission and were informed of the prominent issues found during the process.

A range of issues still remained at these institutions, such as a lack of adequate political consciousness, risk awareness and resolve to promote financial reform, and activities violating frugality rules, according to the feedback given by the inspectors.

The financial institutions were asked to remedy the problems found during the process, advance financial reforms and boost the overall stability and high-quality development of the sector.

During Friday's meeting, the participants stressed that the disciplinary inspection aims to strategically advance the Party's self-reform and enable the Party to exercise strict selfgovernance in all respects, according to a statement released after the meeting.

By strengthening political supervision, the disciplinary inspectors work to uncover problems in the financial sector, promote reform and development and play a significant role in fighting corruption in the sector, they said.

The meeting's participants called for efforts to properly use the results of the inspection, and improve relevant systems and mechanisms to strengthen supervision over the financial sector.

Party committees of the financial institutions must take concrete actions to implement the remedial measures, and set up regular and long-term mechanisms to integrate the remediation efforts in their everyday work to provide strong political support for the healthy development of the sector, they said.