Beijing ? Communist-led China took the historic step Sunday of amending its constitution to protect the property rights of capitalists who are driving its economic boom, while promising to focus on helping farmers and millions of others left behind.

The nation’s parliament, making changes dictated by the Communist Party, also passed an amendment declaring respect for human rights but not promising free political expression, a key issue for government critics.

The changes came as the figurehead National People’s Congress closed a 10-day annual session dominated by promises to shift development to the poor countryside, where 800 million Chinese live.

“We should unite all the people of China in focusing on construction and development in order to build a better future,” the country’s No. 2 leader, NPC chairman Wu Bangguo, said in a nationally televised address to the parliament’s closing ceremony.

The outcome of the parliament reflected the ruling party’s two-track strategy for China’s immediate future: heavy new spending to help the rural poor, financed by more economic reform and robust growth, projected this year at 7 percent.

The amendment on private property is the first of its kind since China’s 1949 communist revolution, but it only brings the constitution into line with the country’s commercial reality.

China already has laws regulating private property, and the constitution was amended in 1999 to declare private business an “important component” of the economy. Millions of Chinese own businesses and apartments and trade shares on the country’s two stock exchanges.