Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday stressed ideological and ethical education for college students to cultivate talents with noble minds, sound ethics and abundant knowledge to meet the need of the country's modernization drive.

"The education should make it possible for college students to keep pace with the time, share the fate of the motherland and work hard together with all the people," Hu said at a national conference held from Jan. 17 to 18 on improving the ideological education for college students.

"This is of far-reaching and strategic significance for ensuring the realization of an all-round well-off society in China,realizing the great target of modernization and achieving the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," he said.

He said China should not only improve college students' knowledge of various sciences, but raise their ideological and political awareness.

"Only with this job done well can we keep the society stable and the great causes of the people passed down to future generations," the president said.

He urged Communist Party committees and governments at various levels to fully understand the importance and urgency of the work under the new circumstances.

The president said that ideal, patriotism, ethics and ability should be all stressed to make college students developed in a comprehensive way.

He noted that as the key bases for ideological education, colleges should take the cultivation of socialist builders and successors as their fundamental goal.

"It's one of the key jobs for the Communist Party to improve its ruling capability and consolidate its ruling status," the president said.

Other Chinese leaders Wen Jiabao, Zeng Qinghong, Wu Guanzheng, Luo Gan and Li Changchun, officials of central government departments and representatives from 31 colleges were present at the conference.