补齐短板(buqi duanban): Strengthen the weak links

One of the key phrases in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) is "strengthen the weak links" in the country's development over the next five years. While the country has laid firm foundations for accomplishing the first centenary goal of comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society by 2020, there are obvious undertakings that still need to be accomplished, for example, equal education, critical illness insurance, reform of the house-hold registration system and ecological and environmental protection. Moreover, the situations may differ in various localities and hence should be solved accordingly.

Although the weak links manifest as local problems, they could restrict and even damage the overall situation. Therefore, when planning for economic and social development over the next five years, efforts need to further enhance the harmony and balance nationwide.

This requires local officials to have a good awareness of the problems so that they can identify and strengthen the weak links in their governance. If effective measures are introduced to target these weak links, it will only be a matter of time before a moderately well-off Chinese society is realized in an all-round way.

(China Daily 11/11/2015 page8)