BEIJING, (Xinhua) — The classroom hummed with energy, and yet was wrapped in a deep, gentle silence.
At the front stood Wang Yani, a hearing-impaired teacher imparting knowledge of beauty and hairdressing at a school in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. She gestured toward the blackboard, her hands moving with clarity and rhythm. Around her, students raised their hands, eager to ask questions. Every exchange flowed not through spoken words, but via sign language.
Becoming a teacher had been Wang’s dream since childhood. The spark that lit it came from an encounter she has never forgotten.
Just before the Spring Festival in 2014, President Xi Jinping visited a children’s welfare home in Hohhot. Wang was among the children living there at the time. During the visit, Xi encouraged her to study hard and excel in school.
In response, the young girl raised her right hand and bent her thumb, a gesture of thanks in her world. Xi responded in the same way, mirroring her movement, a kind smile spreading across his face.
That brief exchange stayed with her. A humble yet profound source of strength, it drove Wang forward through years of study and persistence before she reached the podium she once dreamed of.
As Xi has said, people with disabilities can live rich and fulfilling lives, just like anyone else.
CONSISTENT COMMITMENT
Wang is not the only one who carries such a moment forward.
Since he assumed the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in 2012, Xi has said time and again that people with disabilities, who face distinct challenges, deserve sustained care and attention.
This commitment can be traced back decades.
Huang Daoliang has kept his graduation certificate from Minjiang Vocational University all this time. The paper has faded, but the signature remains legible: Xi Jinping.
Huang lost both arms in an accident when he was young. He learned to write with his feet and moved steadily through school. University, however, seemed out of reach. Twice, he scored high enough on the national entrance exam, but did not receive an offer.
In 1990, he tried again.
This time, his father wrote a letter to Minjiang Vocational University, describing his son’s determination to study. At the time, Xi, then Party secretary of Fuzhou, east China’s Fujian Province, was also serving as the university’s president. With Xi’s support, Huang was eventually offered a place, becoming the first student without arms to enroll in a university in this coastal province.
“It gave me a new beginning,” Huang said years later.
After graduation, Huang returned to his hometown and began working with the local disabled persons’ federation, helping others facing challenges similar to his own.
Today, China is home to more than 85 million people with disabilities. Xi has emphasized the importance of integrating the cause for this group into all areas of the country’s development. As China maps out its national development priorities, he has sought input from people with disabilities as well.
At a 2020 symposium soliciting advice on the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan, Yang Shuting, a young entrepreneur who uses a wheelchair, shared her views on behalf of disabled people. Xi listened closely, taking notes as she spoke.
Hailing from a remote mountainous area in central China’s Hunan Province, Yang carved out her own path from nothing with the support of various sectors of society.
Paralyzed from the chest down due to a car accident at 20, Yang believed that people in a wheelchair can pursue their dreams. In 2015, she registered an enterprise distributing semi-finished artificial flowers to villagers for assembly, thereby helping to boost their incomes.
A year later, she founded a luggage factory, with products exported to regions such as Southeast Asia and Europe. Over the past decade, her businesses have helped more than 1,300 people — including nearly 70 with disabilities — to secure stable income growth.
Though things were working out well, Yang sometimes faced accessibility barriers when she handled goods or went out for business talks. At the symposium, she spoke about the need for better accessibility and stronger support services.
“The construction of accessible facilities is a sign of a country’s and society’s civility, and we must give it high priority,” Xi told her.
Nearly three years later, China’s national legislature adopted the country’s first national law dedicated to accessibility, a landmark move aimed at improving barrier-free environments across the country. Xi signed the presidential order to promulgate the law, which took effect in the same year.
TOWARD SHARED FUTURE
In Xi’s view, people with disabilities are, like anyone else, full members of society, deserving dignity, opportunity, and the chance to shape their own lives.
He stressed the need to give high priority to the work related to the disabled in an instruction before the national day of assisting persons with disabilities last year. The national day falls on May 17 this year.
People with disabilities constitute an important force driving Chinese modernization, Xi said.
Li Yonghua, vice president of Shenzhen University, said Xi’s ideas reflected a broader shift in thinking — from simply providing assistance to people with disabilities to creating a more inclusive social environment.
Li, who also heads a research center for the development of persons with disabilities supported by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, said the focus has expanded beyond material support to institutional protections and barrier-free environments, helping people with disabilities live more independently and access broader opportunities.
With improved accessibility following the implementation of the landmark legislation, more and more people with disabilities like Yang Shuting are joining the workforce. Some of them work in new forms of employment, such as online shop owners and live streamers.
Official data showed that by 2025, the number of employed people with disabilities nationwide had reached 9 million. Over the previous five years, more than 1.28 million households with severely disabled family members underwent home accessibility renovations.
China has also actively aligned its policies and laws with international treaties, with the country being one of the first signatories to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled.
The treaty came into force in China in May 2022, further enriching the range of accessible resources for visually impaired people while lowering the cost of accessing such works.
Meanwhile, 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. As a state party to the convention, China has actively responded to the aspirations and needs of disabled people for a better life, said Zhang Lin, a professor at the Special Education College of Beijing Union University.
The quality of life for people with disabilities in China has improved significantly in recent years, Zhang said, thanks to a range of support measures that have given many greater confidence in building a better future.
As China begins to implement the goals set out in the outline of its 15th Five-Year Plan, additional efforts are being made to further support and empower people with disabilities in these five years.
While advancing Chinese modernization, the country will continue to improve the social security and service systems for people with disabilities and promote the all-around development of relevant programs, Xi said. ■
