Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government

6. Vigorously ensuring and improving people's wellbeing, and promoting social harmony and progress

Improving people's wellbeing is the fundamental goal of economic development. We can ensure that there is sustained impetus for economic development, a solid foundation for social progress, and lasting stability for the country only by working hard to ensure and improve people's wellbeing.

We will do everything in our power to increase employment. This is the top priority in our work of ensuring and improving people's wellbeing. This year the employment situation will still be serious, and we cannot slacken our efforts in the slightest. We need to continue to implement a proactive employment policy. The central government will allocate 43.3 billion yuan to stimulate employment. Emphasis will be given to helping college graduates, rural migrant workers, people experiencing employment difficulty, and demobilized military personnel find jobs. The "five-four-three" employment support policies, originally scheduled to expire in 2009, will be extended for another year. [These policies allow qualified enterprises to postpone their payments of five types of social security contributions; reduce urban workers' contributions to four types of insurance funds, namely medical insurance, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and maternity insurance; and continue three types of subsidized, enterprise-based job training programs. - Tr.] We will increase policy support and employment guidance to encourage college graduates to take community-level jobs in urban and rural areas, and jobs in the central and western regions and in small and medium-sized enterprises. We will expand channels for seeking employment and starting businesses. We will encourage different forms of flexible employment, including starting businesses and finding jobs independently. We will also encourage job growth through the creation of new businesses. We will establish a sound mechanism for stimulating employment through public investment. We will continue to strengthen vocational training, with the focus on increasing the employability of rural migrant workers and new members of the workforce in urban and rural areas. We will improve the employment services system, strengthen coordination and cooperation between labor-exporting and labor-importing regions, and guide workers in an orderly flow, especially rural migrant workers. We will accelerate the development of a unified and standardized human resources market. We will safeguard the lawful rights and interests of workers and establish harmonious labor relations. We will work tirelessly to create more job opportunities and to enable workers to tap their full potential and find suitable jobs.

We will move faster to improve the social security system for both urban and rural residents. We will steadily move forward with the pilot program for a new old-age insurance system for rural residents by expanding it to 23% of the country's counties. We will act more quickly to solve longstanding problems, including the lack of basic old-age pensions for retirees of collectively owned enterprises that do not participate in group pension programs. Workers' compensation will be extended to all of the 1.3 million workers injured in previous jobs who are not receiving benefits. We will work to extend coverage of social security to rural migrant workers. We will strengthen our work concerning subsistence allowances in both urban and rural areas, gradually increase allowances, and ensure that they are managed in a manner that reflects changing conditions and that everyone who is entitled to such allowances receives them. We will work harder to build the social security and social services system for people with a disability, further implement policies for assisting and supporting them, and create a better environment for them to participate in social activities on an equal footing. We will increase basic old-age pensions for enterprise retirees by 10%. Governments at all levels need to spend more on social security, and the central government will appropriate 318.5 billion yuan for this purpose. We will increase the country's social security funds through multiple channels and strengthen oversight and supervision to maintain and increase their value. We will encourage and support the development of charities. We will move faster to build a better social safety net to provide basic security to people and free them from worries.

We will reform the income distribution system. A rational income distribution system is an important manifestation of social fairness and justice. We will not only make the "pie" of social wealth bigger by developing the economy, but also distribute it well on the basis of a rational income distribution system. We need to uphold and improve the system in which distribution according to work is dominant and multiple forms of distribution coexist, give due consideration to efficiency and fairness, and take the path to common prosperity.

First, we will promptly formulate policies and measures to adjust the distribution of national income, and gradually increase the proportion of income individuals receive from the distribution of national income and the proportion of the primary distribution of income that goes to wages and salaries. We will strengthen the role of fiscal and taxation policies in adjusting the primary and secondary distribution of income. We will create conditions for more people to earn income from property.

Second, we will deepen the reform of the income distribution system of monopoly industries. We will improve the policy of dual control over total payroll and wage scales in these industries. We will set strict standards for the income of executives, especially senior ones, of state-owned enterprises and financial institutions, and improve related oversight and supervision rules.

Third, we will further standardize the pattern of income distribution. We will protect legitimate income; regulate excessively high income; ban illegal income; gradually form a transparent, fair and rational pattern of income distribution; and resolutely reverse the widening income gap.

We will promote the steady and sound development of the real estate market. We will resolutely curb the precipitous rise of housing prices in some cities and satisfy people's basic need for housing.

First, we will continue to carry out low-income housing projects on a large scale. The central government will allocate 63.2 billion yuan for low-income housing, an increase of 8.1 billion yuan over last year. We will build 3 million housing units for low-income families and renovate 2.8 million housing units in run-down areas. We will expand the pilot program for renovating dilapidated houses in rural areas. Governments at all levels must genuinely take responsibility to ensure that the annual construction plan is strictly carried out and that policies concerning land, funding, and preferential treatment are implemented well.

Second, we will continue to support the purchase of homes to be used as their owners' residences. We will increase the land supply for building small and medium-sized condominiums to be sold at low and medium price levels, and expedite the approval procedure for and construction of such housing projects. We will standardize and develop the market for used homes, encourage home renting, and stimulate the rental housing market.

Third, we will rein in speculative housing purchases. We will intensify the implementation of differentiated credit and tax policies. We will improve the advance purchase system for commodity housing.

Fourth, we will work to rectify and standardize the real estate market. We will improve the methods for managing and using income from land, and keep land prices from rising too fast. We will make greater efforts to deal with violations of laws and regulations such as keeping land unused, property hoarding, and price rigging.

We will accelerate the reform and development of the pharmaceutical and healthcare fields. We will actively yet prudently carry forward the reform of the pharmaceutical and healthcare systems, and comprehensively accomplish five key tasks. We will continue to expand the coverage of guaranteed basic medical care. This year we will raise government subsidies on basic medical insurance for non-working urban residents and on the new type of rural cooperative medical care system to 120 yuan per person per year, up 50% over last year, and appropriately increase rates for individual contributions. We will carry out a pilot program for ensuring that rural children with leukemia or congenital heart disease receive medical treatment and provide more assistance to these less fortunate children and their families. We will install the basic drug system in 60% of the community medical institutions run by the government and urge other medical institutions to give high priority to the use of basic drugs. We will promote the centralized purchase and unified distribution of basic drugs. We will basically complete the plan for building community medical institutions in urban and rural areas, undertake personnel education and training on a large scale, and further improve the policies and measures for supporting the development of village clinics and rural doctors. We will improve the mechanism for subsidizing community medical institutions and link salaries to performance. We will carry out a pilot program for making community medical institutions the first option in medical treatment and work to create a service system in which hospitals and community medical institutions (each with its own well-defined functions) coordinate and collaborate with each other and refer cases to each other. We will strengthen prevention and control of influenza A (H1N1) and other major communicable diseases as well as chronic, occupational, and endemic diseases, and enhance our ability to handle public health emergencies. We will carry out a pilot reform of public hospitals; maintain the non-profit nature of basic medical services; make institutional and procedural innovations; boost the morale of medical workers; raise the quality of service; control medical costs; and improve relations between medical service providers and consumers. We will energetically support the use of non-government capital to run medical and healthcare institutions, and such institutions will be treated the same as public hospitals in obtaining operating licenses and providing medical services covered by the public medical insurance system. We will support and promote the development of traditional Chinese medicine and folk medicines of ethnic minorities. The reform and development of the pharmaceutical and healthcare fields affects the health of the people and the happiness of their families; therefore, we must overcome all difficulties and solve this universal problem.

We will do a good job in population and family planning work. We will continue to maintain a low birthrate. We will provide good family planning services for the floating population. We will provide regular gynecological examinations and subsidize hospital childbirths for rural women. We will strengthen intervention in birth defects; carry out a pilot program of free pre-pregnancy checkups; and provide quality health services for infants, pre-school children, and prenatal and nursing women. We will continue to reward and support eligible rural families that comply with family planning regulations, and carry out the "lower birthrate equals faster prosperity" project in the western region. We will take effective measures to protect the rights and interests of women and minors. We will intensify strategic research on coping with an aging population and move more quickly to create a sound system of old-age services so that people can live a happy life in their old age.