Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong visited and conveyed festival greetings to people of the Alxa League of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday and Saturday.

"Building a new socialist countryside is to make rural area prosperous and villagers wealthy," said Zeng when visiting the home of a village cadre in the Alxa League, where the Shenzhou V and VI spaceships took off in 2003 and 2005 respectively.

"Rural development needs qualified personnel, especially leaders who can lead fellow villagers to get rich," said Zeng, who is leading a delegation of the central authorities to attend celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Joining locals in traditional "Nadamu" festivity, which includes horse racing and Mongolian wrestling, Zeng danced with local ethnic minorities and presented awards to winners. He encouraged the local people to keep holding such activities with distinctive ethnic features.

In his visit to an economic zone, Zeng said that the development of recycling economy is of great significance to sustainable development of Inner Mongolia and also ecological safety of the entire nation. He called for pushing forward energy conservation and ecological protection in developing the local economy.

Zeng praised the building of new villages for people that formerly lived in areas with harsh conditions and asked local officials to make overall plans for their relocation to improve their life and protect the environment.