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.
4. Deepening reform and opening up with greater political courage and vision
Reform and opening up are the fundamental force that drives China's development and progress. We can continue to advance our cause only by adhering to reform and opening up. China has entered a crucial stage of reform. We must further emancipate our minds, comprehensively deepen reform of the economic structure, continue to actively yet prudently carry out reform of the political structure, deepen reform of the cultural administrative system, accelerate reform of the social system, improve the system for promoting ecological progress; and constantly deepen reforms.
We need to improve the socialist market economy. We should unwaveringly consolidate and develop the public sector of the economy and encourage, and support and guide the development of the non-public sector, so as to foster a structural environment in which economic entities under different forms of ownership have equal access to factors of production in accordance with the law, compete on a level playing field and enjoy equal legal protection. We should deepen reform of state-owned enterprises and key industries.
We should quicken reform of the fiscal and taxation systems, adjust relations between the central government and local governments concerning financial resources and powers, and improve the system of transfer payments. We should improve the public finance system, institute a system of local taxation, and establish a taxation system conducive to optimizing the economic structure and enhancing social fairness.
We should deepen reform of the financial system and improve the modern financial system so that it supports development of the real economy. We should raise the competitiveness of the banking, securities and insurance industries, accelerate development of a multilevel capital market, and actively develop the bond market. We should steadily carry out reforms to make interest rates and the RMB exchange rate more market-based, expand cross-border use of the RMB and gradually achieve the RMB's convertibility under capital accounts.
We should deepen reform of the investment and financing systems, carry out price reform and improve the pricing mechanism for resource products and the system of compensation for ecological damage.
We should continue to actively yet steadily advance function-based reform of public institutions.
The income distribution system is a basic system of vital importance for economic and social development, and an important cornerstone of the socialist market economy. We have formulated guidelines on deepening reform of the income distribution system, and we now need to promptly formulate specific policies, ensure that institutions are established and policies are implemented, resolve problems in income distribution, and narrow the income gap so that the fruits of development are more equitably shared by all the people.
We need to advance development of socialist democracy and the socialist rule of law. We should ensure that the people occupy the principal position, make people's democracy more extensive, fuller in scope and sounder, ensure that the people enjoy extensive rights and freedoms prescribed by law, and promote people's well-rounded development and safeguard social fairness and justice. We should govern the country on the basis of the law, and fully respect the authority of the Constitution and laws. We should ensure that the powers of policy making, implementation and oversight both constrain each other and function in concert and that government bodies exercise their powers in accordance with statutory mandates and procedures. We should continue to transform government functions, separate government administration from the management of enterprises, state assets, public institutions and social organizations, and build a well-structured, clean, efficient and service-oriented government that has scientifically defined functions and that the people are satisfied with. We should improve the conduct of our work, maintain close ties with the people, advocate hard work and plain living, practice thrift, oppose extravagance and waste, and eliminate formalistic and bureaucratic practices. We should uphold democratic oversight, legal oversight and public opinion-based oversight and improve the system of checks and oversight over the exercise of power to ensure that the people oversee the exercise of power and that power is exercised in a transparent manner. We should unwaveringly combat corruption, strengthen political integrity, establish institutions to end the excessive concentration of power and lack of checks on power and ensure that officials are honest, government is clean and political affairs are handled with integrity.
Profound changes in domestic and external environments place new and higher requirements on China in developing an open economy. We should adhere to the basic state policy of opening up and implement a more proactive opening up strategy. We should both keep exports stable and expand imports. We should raise the quality and returns of foreign trade rather than just increase its volume, and raise its overall competitive advantages instead of relying only on cost and price advantages. We should make China's exports more competitive in terms of technology, brand, quality and service. We should simultaneously use foreign investment in China and make Chinese investment overseas, and support Chinese enterprises in going global, to create new space for economic development. We should simultaneously deepen opening up in coastal areas and open inland and border areas wider so as to foster a balanced and coordinated pattern of opening up in which all regions have their own distinctive features, draw on each other's strengths, have a clear division of work, and cooperate with each other. We should continue to open up to both developed and developing countries and expand and deepen common interests with all other parties.
Fellow Deputies,
We should fully and faithfully implement the Party's policy on ethnic groups; adhere to and improve the system of regional ethnic autonomy; and strengthen and develop socialist ethnic relations of equality, unity, mutual assistance and harmony.
We should fully implement the Party's basic policy on religion, promote harmonious religious relations, and get religious figures and believers actively involved in economic and social development.
We should assiduously implement the policy of the Party on overseas Chinese affairs and support overseas Chinese as well as returned Chinese and their relatives in endorsing and participating in China's endeavors to achieve modernization and peaceful reunification.
We should accelerate modernization of national defense and the armed forces so as to strengthen China's defense and military capabilities. We should resolutely uphold China's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and ensure its peaceful development.
We should adhere to the principles of "one country, two systems"; the people of Hong Kong governing Hong Kong; the people of Macao governing Macao; and both regions enjoying a high degree of autonomy. We should rally our compatriots in Hong Kong and Macao around us and maintain long-term prosperity and stability of the two regions.
We should adhere to the policy of the Party Central Committee on Taiwan-related work; fully implement the important thinking on cultivating peaceful cross-Straits relations; strengthen and deepen the political, economic, cultural and social foundation for their growth; and accomplish the reunification of the motherland in the course of working together with our compatriots in Taiwan to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
We should continue to hold high the banner of peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit; unswervingly pursue peaceful development; adhere to our independent foreign policy of peace; and promote durable peace and common prosperity in the world.
Fellow Deputies,
We have achieved remarkable progress along the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the past, and now we envision an ever-brighter future for our great country. Under the leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as General Secretary, let us unite as one and work hard to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Recruitment of flight security officers attracts capable men
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