The China Massage Association of Blind Practitioners held its eighth national congress from Nov 26 to 28 in Lanzhou, Northwest China's Gansu province.
Some 161 delegates attended — representing local associations, traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and institutes, blind massage institutions and employment service agencies for people with disabilities from across the country.
The congress reviewed and adopted the work report of the seventh council, elected a new council with Wang Yongcheng as president and outlined the association's key tasks for the next five years.
Cheng Kai, chairman of the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF), sent a congratulatory letter to the congress. Li Dongmei, vice-chairwoman of the CDPF, attended the closing ceremony and delivered a speech.
In his letter, Cheng congratulated the association on the successful completion of its leadership transition. He called on the new council to better serve blind massage practitioners, regulate blind massage practices, and enhance the quality of medical massage services, continuing to promote the high-quality development of the blind massage sector.
Li spoke highly of the achievements made by the association over the past five years in her speech, noting that the Party and the State attach great importance to the development of disability-related undertakings and are advancing the integration of blind massage into the national development agenda.
She emphasized that the association should seize the opportunities presented by the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), conduct in-depth research, identify key challenges and bottlenecks and take effective measures to address them, striving to achieve new progress.
Li also called on the association to clarify its development positioning, leverage its strengths in resources, talent and academic research and serve as a think tank for the CDPF. The association should also actively solicite the opinions and suggestions of its members to contribute to the advancement of the entire blind massage profession, she added.
The Second National Blind Massage Skills Competition was held on the sidelines of the congress. A total of 122 contestants from 28 provincial-level regions took part, with 34 participants placed among the top eight in the competition.