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Report on China's economic, social development plan [Full Text]
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-03-21 11:23

Figure 7. Change in the Structure of Foreign Direct Investment

6. Substantial progress was made in improving people's lives and promoting harmony.

Positive results were achieved in making the development of education a national priority. A mechanism for ensuring adequate funding for rural compulsory education was implemented throughout the country, enabling 150 million rural primary and middle school students to be exempt from paying tuition and miscellaneous fees and to receive textbooks required by the state free of charge. A fund of 3 billion yuan was allocated from the central government to build and renovate rural boarding schools, improve rural middle school buildings in the central and western regions, and develop modern primary and middle school distance education for rural areas. The goals in the plan to make nine-year compulsory education universally available and basically eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults in the western region were met on schedule in 2007, with more than 99% of the target population in the country attaining these two goals. The central government allocated 2.1 billion yuan to support construction of practice laboratories for vocational education, demonstration vocational colleges, secondary vocational schools and county-level vocational education centers. New enrollment at secondary vocational schools totaled 8.01 million. The national system of scholarships and assistance grants was further improved and trials were launched to provide free education to students majoring in education at normal universities directly under the Ministry of Education. The secondary gross enrollment ratio reached 66%, and the tertiary gross enrollment ratio 23%.

Figure 8. Counties Reaching the Goals in the Plan to Make Nine-year Compulsory Education Universally Available and Basically Eliminate Illiteracy among Young and Middle-aged Adults

Development of a multi-level medical and health service system for both urban and rural residents was accelerated. The governmental located 2.7 billion yuan to support the development of 2,502 health clinics in towns and townships and 514 county-level hospitals, and supply medical equipment to 11,700 town and township health clinics. Availability of community-level health services was raised to 98% of all cities at and above the prefecture level, 93% of all municipal districts and over 50% of all county seats. Continued improvement was made in family planning work. The birthrate remained stable at a low level and the natural population growth rate was 0.517%.

Development of culture, tourism and sports was accelerated. Work was started to extend radio and TV coverage to every village with electricity and a minimum size of 20 households and to build the fourth phase of the Tibet-Xinjiang Project to extend radio coverage in the western region. Radio coverage now reaches 95.4% and television coverage 96.6% of the country's population. The trials to build multipurpose cultural centers in towns and townships and the project to set up a national shared database for cultural information and resources progressed smoothly. The National Grand Theater was built and put into operation, and work on key cultural facilities such as the second phase project of the National Library of China, the project to build a facility for the National Theater Company of China and the project to expand the National Museum of China was accelerated. Efforts were strengthened to protect cultural and natural heritage sites. The press and publishing, literature and art, philosophy and social sciences all flourished. Infrastructure for key tourist sites in the early history of the CPC continued to improve. The number of domestic and outbound tourist trips grew by 15.5% and 18.6% respectively. Great efforts were made to stage sports and exercise activities for the public in connection with the coming Olympics, development of urban and rural public sports facilities was accelerated and construction of 36 Olympic venues was completed.