Wen's gov't work report at the Second Session of the 11th NPC

Xinhua | Updated: 2011-03-09 16:20

6. Energetically developing social programs and vigorously ensuring and improving the well-being of the people

This year we will concentrate on accomplishing major tasks that are urgently needed in economic and social development and directly related to the vital interests of the people to improve their well-being.

We will do everything in our power to stimulate employment. We will make full use of the role of the service sector, labor-intensive industries, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the non-public sector of the economy in creating jobs. We will implement a more proactive employment policy, and the central government will allocate 42 billion yuan for this purpose.

First, we will give high priority to facilitating the employment of university graduates. Graduates who take jobs in public administration and public services at the community level in urban and rural areas will receive social security benefits and position subsidies. Those who either take jobs in villages or enlist in the army will receive tuition reimbursement and have their student loans forgiven. We will encourage institutions of higher learning, research institutes and enterprises undertaking key research projects to recruit qualified university graduates to do research work. Enterprises recruiting such graduates will receive relevant employment policy support from the government. We will speed up the establishment of startup industrial parks and incubation bases that require less investment and yield quicker results where college graduates can start their own businesses.

Second, we will expand employment opportunities for rural migrant workers in cities while stabilizing their existing jobs. We will stimulate their employment through government investment and the launch of major projects. We will encourage and help enterprises that are in a difficult situation to prevent layoffs by renegotiating wage levels with their employees, adopting flexible employment and work hours, or providing job training for them. We will increase the export of organized labor services and guide the orderly flow of rural migrant workers. We will arrange for those that have returned to their home villages to take part in the construction of local public facilities.

Third, we will help urban residents experiencing difficulty finding work, members of zero-employment households and workers in disaster-stricken areas find jobs. We will create more public-service jobs.

Fourth, we will vigorously support individuals in starting their own businesses or finding jobs on their own, thus expanding employment by creating new businesses. We will adopt facilitating and preferential policies concerning market access, taxation, financing and land use to encourage more workers to become entrepreneurs. We will further lower the barrier for individuals, including rural migrant workers who have returned to their home villages, to start their own businesses and lend them more support in this area.

Fifth, we will further improve public services for employment. We will improve the release of employment information and provide more effective career and employment guidance. We will vigorously develop vocational training. We will increase policy support for skills training for rural migrant workers and urban residents experiencing employment difficulty.

We will move faster to improve the social safety net.

First, we will press ahead with institutional development. We will improve the basic old-age insurance system, continue to carryout the pilot projects to fully fund personal accounts for old-age insurance, and comprehensively carry out planning at the provincial level. We will formulate and implement a method for old-age pensions for rural migrant workers. The pilot projects for establishing a new type of old-age insurance system for rural residents will cover approximately 10% of the counties and county-level cities in the country. We will introduce a method for transferring old-age pension accounts for workers moving from one region to another, and improve the systems of unemployment, workers' compensation, and maternity insurance. We will improve the urban and rural social assistance systems.

Second, we will expand coverage of social security programs, focusing on coverage for employees in the non-public sector, rural migrant workers, farmers whose land was expropriated, people with flexible employment arrangements and freelancers. All rural residents entitled to cost of living allowances will receive them. We will increase funding for the national social safety net through multiple channels. We will strengthen supervision of social security funds to ensure their safety.

Third, we will increase social security benefits. We will continue to raise the basic old-age pensions for enterprise retirees by an annual average of about 10% per person for the next two years. We will continue to increase unemployment insurance benefits and workers' compensation. We will extend greater financial support to both urban and rural recipients of cost of living allowances and to childless and infirm rural residents who receive subsidies for food, clothing, medical care, housing and burial expenses, and increase subsidies and living allowances to members of entitled groups. We will vigorously develop social welfare and charity programs. The central government plans to spend 293 billion yuan on the social safety net this year, up 17.6% or 43.9 billion yuan over the estimated figure for last year. Local governments will also increase funding in this area.

We will continue to give priority to developing education. This year we will formulate the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Program for Education Reform and Development to make comprehensive arrangements for education reform and development in China through 2020. This year, we need to focus on the following five areas.

First, we will promote fairness in education. We will implement free compulsory education policies for both urban and rural areas well. We will increase public expenditures on rural compulsory education to 300 yuan per primary school student and 500 yuan per junior secondary school student. We will progressively ensure that children of rural migrant workers have access to free compulsory education in the places where their families have relocated. We will increase living allowances for rural students receiving compulsory education who come from poor families and stay in school dormitories. We will strive to basically clear the debts incurred in providing nine-year compulsory education in rural areas within three years. We will improve the national financial aid system for students and increase financial aid for secondary vocational school and university students from poor families to ensure that everyone enjoys equal opportunity to receive education and that no child is denied schooling due to financial difficulties.

Second, we will optimize the education structure. We will energetically develop vocational education, with the focus on supporting rural secondary vocational education. We will gradually make secondary vocational education free, beginning this year with rural students from poor families and students studying agriculture-related subjects. We will continue to improve the quality of higher education, develop high-quality universities and key disciplines, and guide institutions of higher learning to adapt their specialties, curriculums and courses to meet the needs of the market and China's economic and social development.

Third, we will improve the quality of teachers. We will apply a performance-based salary system for teachers in compulsory education and raise salaries for the 12 million primary and secondary school teachers. The central government will spend 12 billion yuan and local governments will also increase funding for this purpose. We will step up training for all teachers, especially rural teachers, and encourage graduates from teachers colleges and other colleges and universities to teach at community and village schools.

Fourth, we will advance well-rounded education. Education of all types and at all levels must focus on promoting all-round development of students. Reform of curriculums, textbooks, teaching methods and examination and evaluation systems should be accelerated to relieve primary and secondary school students of their excessive study load so that they will have more time to think, practice and create.

Fifth, we will implement a program to ensure that all primary and secondary school buildings are safe and promote standardization in the construction of rural primary and secondary schools. We will make school buildings places that are the safest and provide the greatest assurance to parents.

We will carry forward pharmaceutical and health care reform and development. We will ensure that public medical and health care services serve the public good and fully arouse the initiative of health workers. We will work hard to establish a nationwide basic medical and health care system for both urban and rural areas to begin providing universal coverage. We will focus on the following five areas starting from this year.

First, we will develop a system that ensures basic medical care. Urban residents will be covered by basic medical insurance for urban workers or basic medical insurance for non-working urban residents, and rural residents will be covered by the new type of rural cooperative medical care system. We will ensure that these programs cover over 90% of those eligible within three years. The central government will provide appropriate subsidies for retirees from closed or bankrupt state-owned enterprises in financially strained regions to get such insurance. We will continue to raise the standard for financing and increase government subsidies for basic medical insurance for non-working urban residents and the new type of rural cooperative medical care system, appropriately expand the scope of reimbursement and raise the proportion of costs reimbursed. We will improve urban and rural medical assistance programs and improve the level of assistance.

Second, we will establish a national system for basic drugs. This year, we will formulate and promulgate a unified national basic drugs catalog and adopt policies concerning their production, distribution, pricing, use and insurance reimbursement in order to ease the burden on patients for the cost of basic drugs.

Third, we will improve the community-level medical and health service system. This year, we will complete the building of 29,000health clinics in towns and townships supported by the plan. In the coming three years, the central government will allocate funds to support the building of another 5,000 central health clinics in towns and townships, 2,000 county-level hospitals and 2,400 community health service centers in urban areas. We will support the construction of health care clinics in villages in remote regions and ensure that all incorporated villages have their own health care clinics.

Fourth, we will steadily promote equal access for all to basic public health services. We will expand the scope of free public health services and ensure that the per capita public health service expenditure for both urban and rural residents is not less than 15 yuan, a level that will rise gradually in the future. We will appropriate more funds to prevent and control major communicable diseases, chronic and occupational diseases, and endemics.

Fifth, we will carry forward pilot reforms in public hospitals with the emphasis on reforms in their management system and their operation and oversight mechanisms. We will encourage every locality to seek effective ways to separate government administration from medical practice, management from operations, medical care from drugs, and for-profit from nonprofit operations. We will gradually eliminate the practice of hospitals subsidizing their medical services with drug sales and reform the mechanism of subsidizing public hospitals. We will encourage all localities to seek ways to establish a medical service pricing mechanism based on consultations among stakeholders and establish a system whereby relevant institutions, representatives of the general public, and experts oversee and evaluate the quality of medical services. We will give full play to traditional Chinese medicine and folk medicines of ethnic minorities in disease prevention and control. Governments at all levels will allocate an additional 850 billion yuan in the next three years, including 331.8 billion yuan from the central government, to ensure smooth progress in the reform of the system of pharmaceuticals and health care. Because this reform concerns the people's health-related rights and interests, we need to improve leadership, make plans and arrangements carefully, progress vigorously yet prudently, and effectively solve the problem of medical services being unaffordable and inadequate, in order to provide safe, effective, convenient and affordable medical and health care services for the people.

We will do our work related to population and family planning well and maintain a low birthrate. From this year on, we will introduce a policy in all rural areas to subsidize hospitalized childbirth, provide regular prenatal checkups and postpartum visits for women, and monitor the growth of infants and toddlers less than three years of age. We will intensify our efforts to prevent birth defects. We will increase the reward to rural women at or above the age of 60 who have complied with family planning regulations from 600 yuan to 720 yuan per person. We will improve services for and intensify management of the floating population and better protect the rights and interests of women and minors. We will provide routine gynecological examinations for rural women. We will support and accelerate programs benefiting people with disabilities. We will continue to intensify our work concerning the elderly.

We will vigorously develop culture and sports. Developing cultural programs and promoting cultural enrichment will help not only enrich people's cultural lives but also expand avenues of consumption. We need to vigorously develop non-profit cultural programs and accelerate improvement of the system of public cultural services. We will intensify construction of key cultural facilities as well as community-based cultural facilities in both urban and rural areas, particularly the project to extend radio and TV coverage to all villages, and the construction of multipurpose cultural centers in towns and townships and small libraries in rural areas, and we will vigorously promote cultural projects that benefit the people. We will help accelerate the development of cultural industries, improve policy support for them and foster leading cultural enterprises. We will help philosophy and the social sciences flourish, and actively develop literature, the arts, radio, TV, film, the press and publishing. We will strengthen development and management of Internet culture and effectively protect our cultural relics and intangible cultural heritage. We will reform management and operation of nonprofit cultural institutions and transform for-profit cultural agencies into enterprises. We will build more and better community-based public sports facilities, vigorously promote mass sports activities, raise the level of competitive sports and develop the sports industry.

We will strengthen the development of democracy and the legal system. We will carry out political restructuring in an active yet prudent manner and develop socialist democratic politics. We need to improve democratic institutions, enrich the forms of democracy, expand its channels, and carry out democratic elections, decision-making, administration and oversight in accordance with the law. We will improve the mechanisms of self-governance by the people at the community level and expand the scope of community-level self-governance, improve the system for community-level democratic administration and ensure that the people directly exercise their democratic rights and administer community-level public affairs and public programs in accordance with the law. We will increase publicity of and education in the law, intensify education about citizenship, and promote the values of socialist democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality, equity and justice. We will coordinate development of urban and rural communities and promote the healthy growth of civic organizations. We will strengthen government work concerning the law, increase transparency in government legislation, expand public participation therein, and ensure that the law is enforced in a standardized, fair and civilized manner.

We will strengthen public administration and maintain harmony and stability in society. We need to pay special attention to safeguarding people's legitimate rights and interests, correctly handle problems among the people, properly deal with their complaints in a timely manner, and resolutely correct all actions that harm their interests. We will improve the mechanism for mediating, handling and resolving social tensions and guide the people in expressing their concerns relating to their interests by reasonable and lawful means. We will adhere to the system whereby leading cadres, especially principal ones, handle people's letters and receive people's visits in order to serve the people and resolve conflicts. We will improve the early-warning system for social stability to actively prevent and properly handle all types of mass incidents. We will launch intensive campaigns to ensure public security and maintain law and order through a full range of measures. We will be on high alert for and severely crack down on criminal offenses in accordance with the law in order to safeguard national security and social stability.