The Chinese government has invited public suggestions on research topics of its crucial Five-year Development Plan for the first time since the founding of new China in 1949, signifying another landmark step in opening up government policy-making.

The State Development and Reform Commission received 350 research topics, involving economy, environment, population, education and social security, for China's 11th Five-Year Development Plan (2005-2010). The plan finally included 56 of these as formal topics.

Some scholars regard this public consultation as China's general shift from an individual to a collective decision-making mechanism. Previously, the country's five-year development plans were drafted by the government departments alone.

Hu Angang, director of the National Conditions Research Center in prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing, said that China had shifted from individual leader to collective leadership decision- making. The process has changed from closed and unexplained to open and transparent.

Reviewing the period in the five-plus decades since 1949, Hu said three vital decision errors had been made.

The first was that of "taking class struggle as the key link". Under this circumstance, frequent political struggles had been launched in the 1960s to 1970s, setting back the modernization drive.

The second was the error concerning "hasten anxious economic plan", which caused China's economic distribution imbalance; and the third was the "erroneous population policy", which resulted in the country's population explosion in two decades from the early 1950s to 1960s.

Hu acknowledged that the significant decisions were made by certain state leaders.

By the 1980s, however, late veteran leader Deng Xiaoping advocated a collective decision-making mechanism.

In 1987, the report of the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) stated that major national issues should be open to public discussion and members of the leadership collective of the CPC joined Deng in decision-making.

No major decision errors, therefore, occurred in that period of time and minor mistakes were corrected before they caused problems.

Since the 1990s, leaders of the CPC said time and again that public opinion, especially from domestic and foreign experts, should be taken into account in making significant decisions for the country.

"Since then, China has entered a 'decision consulting era'," said Hu.

In March 2003, the newly-revised State Council Work Regulation stipulated that the State Council should heed views from democratic parties, non-governmental organizations and experts in all fields before it made major significant decisions.

As early as February 1998, Hu wrote his first national conditions report, namely, China's Unemployment and Employment Issues, which gave a true picture on the status of laid-off workers, peasant farmers' incomes and related social security issues. Two leaders of the State Council wrote timely instructions and commentary remarks on the report.

From 1998 to 2002, the National Conditions Center directed by Hu Angang, submitted 39 reports on various sectors of the country' s national conditions to the State Council, all of which were given comments and instructions by leaders.

He has also attended two expert forums, held by Premier Wen Jiabao on national conditions. On April 13, 2003, Hu submitted a report on "Coping with SARS disease positively and in an all-round way" to the State Council. His nine worthy suggestions on battling against SARS epidemic were all adopted.

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