3. Giving high priority to ensuring and improving people’s wellbeing and comprehensively improving their material and cultural lives

An important lesson we learned in our response to the sudden outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 is that economic development and social development need to be coordinated. In developing the economy in the years since then, we have placed greater importance on ensuring and improving people’s wellbeing and developing social programs, and the government has made greater efforts and provided more funding in this area than ever before. These unremitting efforts have resulted in much better coordination of China’s economic and social development. The structure of Chinese society, its forms of organization, and the pattern of interests in society have all undergone profound changes, and social problems have increased markedly. We must make ensuring and improving people’s wellbeing the starting point and goal of all the government’s work, give higher priority to it, and strive to strengthen social development.

We should do all we can to increase employment. We should persevere in implementing the strategy of giving top priority to employment and adopt a more proactive employment policy. We should create more jobs by maintaining stable economic growth and adjusting the economic structure and provide better vocational skills training to help people to find jobs or start their own businesses. We should increase government spending and policy support, improve the employment services system, stimulate employment by encouraging business startups, assist target groups in finding jobs, and stimulate sustained, steady increases in urban and rural incomes.

We should improve the social security system. We should continue to follow the policy of making coverage universal, ensuring basic care, and providing multilevel and sustainable social security. We should expand the coverage of social security, turn over the overall management of social security accounts to higher-level authorities, raise social security benefits, improve and coordinate all social security programs, make social security more equitable and sustainable, and facilitate the smooth transfer of social security accounts between localities. This year, basic old-age pensions for enterprise retirees should be raised by another 10%, and subsistence allowances for urban and rural residents and subsidies for entitled groups should also be further raised. Greater support should be given to developing child welfare agencies and the system of social services for the elderly.

We should advance reform and development of medical and health care services, consolidate and improve the system for using basic drugs and the new operating mechanisms of community-level medical and health care institutions, speed up the reform of public hospitals, and encourage nongovernmental bodies to operate hospitals. We should support development of traditional Chinese medicine and ethnic minority medicine. We should improve the universal medical insurance system, establish a mechanism to provide insurance and aid for treating major and very serious diseases, and conduct a pilot project to insure against 20 serious diseases. (Note: They are childhood leukemia, congenital heart disease in children, uremia, breast cancer, cervical cancer, holergasia, drug-resistant tuberculosis, opportunistic AIDS and HIV infection, lung cancer, esophagus cancer, gastric cancer, colon cancer, rectal cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, acute myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, hemophilia, type 1 diabetes, hyperthyroidism, and cheilopalatognathus.) This year, annual government subsidies for the new rural cooperative medical care system and basic medical insurance for non-working urban residents should be raised from 240 yuan to 280 yuan per person respectively, and the per person payment standard for basic public health services should be increased from 25 yuan to 30 yuan.

We should progressively improve the government population policy. We should adhere to the basic state policy on family planning. In response to changes in the size and structure of China’s total population, we should comprehensively solve problems relating to the size, health, structure and geographical distribution of the population and promote long-term, balanced population development. We should boost the development of elderly services, protect the rights and interests of women and minors, and take an interest in and support programs that benefit people with disabilities.

We should strengthen and make innovations in social management. We should improve the way the government provides public services, strengthen the system of social management and services at the community level, and improve self-governance by villagers and urban residents, to ensure that the people directly exercise their democratic rights in accordance with the law by managing community-level public affairs and running public service programs. We should reform the management system for social organizations, and guide their sound and orderly development. We should establish a sound mechanism for safeguarding people’s rights and interests; improve the integrated system of mediation by the people, administrative mediation and judicial mediation; strengthen the system of legal assistance; and carry out reform of the handling of people’s complaints about legal and litigation-related issues. We should maintain open and regular channels for people to voice their demands, and we should coordinate the people’s interests and protect their rights and interests. We should improve the mechanism for assessing potential risks major policy decisions may pose to social stability and the emergency response mechanism. The purpose of all this work is to preserve law and order and promote social harmony and stability.

Food and drug safety is a prominent issue of widespread concern. We should reform and improve mechanisms for overseeing and supervising food and drug safety and strengthen overall coordination. We should require enterprises to assume primary responsibility for safety, exercise strict oversight and supervision throughout the whole process from production to consumption, and move faster to establish a scientific and effective food and drug safety system that suits China’s national conditions so as to better ensure food and drug safety. We should strengthen the public safety system and improve workplace safety conditions to prevent accidents, especially major and very serious ones.

We should tighten regulation of the real estate market and strengthen construction of government-subsidized housing. We need to firmly rein in speculative and investment-driven housing demand, promptly improve the accountability system for stabilizing housing prices and the policies for regulating the real estate market, and strengthen mechanisms for sustaining its steady and sound development. We should continue to build and manage government-subsidized housing for the people so they have housing they are satisfied with. This year, 4.7 million government-subsidized urban housing units should be basically completed, construction of another 6.3 million units should begin, and renovation of dilapidated rural houses should continue.

Education, science and technology play a fundamental, guiding and global role in the country’s modernization drive, and culture is essential for the long-term vitality of a nation and gives the people a sense of belonging. They must therefore occupy a position of greater strategic importance.

We should continue to give top priority to developing education. China’s annual government expenditures on education already exceed two trillion yuan and should continue to increase. We must make good use of such funding to the satisfaction of the people. We need to deepen comprehensive education reform and effectively solve major issues of public concern. We should boost balanced development of compulsory education, accelerate development of modern vocational education and raise the quality of education of all types and at all levels. This should help make education more equitable and provide strong human resources support for China’s development.

We should deepen reform of the management system for science and technology. We should integrate science and technology more closely with the economy, and establish a technological innovation system that is based on enterprises, guided by the market, and integrates enterprises, universities and research institutes. We should focus on priority areas of strategic importance that are vital to China’s overall and long-term development, and strengthen basic research and research on frontier and leading technologies. We should improve the mechanism for openly sharing scientific and technological resources and the fiscal, taxation, banking, industrial technology and personnel policies that support scientific and technological development and industrial application of scientific and technological advances, create a fair and open environment for making innovations, keep scientists and technicians fully motivated, and unleash the creativity of the whole society.

We should effectively advance development of the cultural sector. We should incorporate reform and development of the cultural sector into general plans for economic and social development, and include them in the system for evaluating the performance of governments and officials at all levels so as to promote all-around cultural prosperity and fast development of the cultural sector. The government needs to fulfill its responsibility to develop nonprofit cultural programs, accelerate key cultural projects for the people, and improve the system of public cultural services. We should extensively carry out public fitness activities and promote comprehensive development of both recreational and competitive sports.

We should greatly increase education in public morality, professional ethics, family virtues, and personal integrity. We should promote a creditability system, use political integrity to improve business and public integrity, and foster healthy social conduct.

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