People are the foundation of a nation. Only when people live a peaceful life can the nation be stable and prosperous. The new government will always make improving people's wellbeing a priority and ultimate objective. It will consistently build mechanisms, overcome weaknesses, and work to improve living standards and quality, enhancing citizen satisfaction with life.

The Chinese government will strive hard to secure and improve people's wellbeing.

According to Premier Li Keqiang's Report on Government Work, efforts to improve wellbeing last year consisted of three features.

First, the government increased fiscal spending to keep quality of life above a minimum threshold. Despite the imbalance between the government’s fiscal income and expenditure, spending to improve quality of life is still increasing.

Specifically, 1.59 trillion yuan ($254.70 billion) was spent on social security and employment, public health, education, housing, culture and sports, which accounted for 23.2 percent of the total and registered a year-on-year growth of 0.3 percent.

In 2013, the government spent money on securing basic living standards. For example, the minimum allowance standard in urban and rural areas has increased by 13.1 percent and 17.7 percent, respectively. Pensions for retired workers from enterprises have increased by 10 percent. Medical care subsidies for urban and rural residents increased to 280 yuan per capita. A total of 6.66 million government-subsidized houses for low-income people began construction, and 5.44 million of them were completed. Roughly 13.94 million children of migrant workers were supported to receive education in cities. The nutrition improvement project for rural students during compulsory education benefited 32 million students from poor families.

Second, the government paid attention to perfecting institutions, improving competence and making sustainable improvements to people’s wellbeing. For employment and income distribution, the government set out plans to help graduates, established systems to help people facing difficulties in employment, and ensured a relatively high increase of people's income during slow economic growth. For social security, the government accelerated the integration of the urban and rural endowment system and medicare system, improved mechanisms for linking social aid and security standards with rising prices, and launched pilot projects for major medical insurance in 28 provinces and regions, increasing the total number of citizens insured and receiving benefits. For education, the government launched an educational poverty alleviation project, reformed rural schools with poor compulsory education, and improved policies to ensure children of migrant workers take school entrance exams. For medical treatment and public health, the government enhanced the construction of a public health system, a medical service system, a birth control service system, general medical practitioner training programs, and an information system for medical treatment and public health.

Third, major indexes related to people's livelihood underwent relatively rapid growth, and public satisfaction level was significantly improved. In 2013, another 13.1 million people were employed in urban areas, reaching a record high. Disposable income for urban residents grew by 7 percent, while net income for rural residents increased by 9.3 percent. Roughly 16.5 million people got out of poverty, with a narrowing income gap between urban and rural areas. By the end of the year, 346 million people benefited from the basic endowment system for urban residents and 474 million people benefited from the new social endowment system for rural residents, increases of 20.83 million and 10.82 million, respectively. The number of children from poor families who got admitted into key universities increased by 8.5 percent compared with that of last year. Other indexes also underwent relatively rapid growth, and urban and rural residents were much more satisfied with their current life. According to a survey carried out in 2013 by the Chinese Livelihood Index Panel under the Development and Research Center of the State Council, among 51,067 people from 31 provinces and regions, 50.4 percent were very pleased with their current life compared to 45 percent in 2012. The percentage of those unsatisfied with their current life decreased from 12.3 percent in 2012 to 10.1 percent in 2013. As for future confidence, those who are optimistic grew from 70.1 percent in 2012 to 72.3 percent in 2013. While the percentage of those pessimistic about the future dropped from 9.5 percent in 2012 to 8.5 percent in 2013.

The ultimate goal is to guarantee a good life for all.

Premier Li Keqiang acknowledged in the report that China might meet many difficulties and problems in the future. Structural problems related to employment are becoming acute and people are still complaining about housing, food and drug safety, medical services, provisions for the old, education and income distribution. According to the survey carried out by the Chinese Livelihood Index Panel under the Development and Research Center of the State Council, people in urban and rural areas are still not pleased with food safety, employment quality and housing. The proportions of people who are very pleased with the above areas are only 28.3 percent, 30.2 percent and 42.9 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, 10.1 percent of people are very dissatisfied with their current life. These people have little education, come from low-income families, and do not have stable jobs or registered households. They are still desperately looking for a better life.

The Report on Government Work has responded positively to address these complaints. To handle expectations, the report also put forward specific developmental objectives and set out specific reform measures. Plans for 2014 government work in the report demonstrated the idea of "people-oriented governance".

First, the government will make improving people's livelihood the foundation and a major part in defining the objectives of economic and social development. The report has set goals for this year's economic and social development: maintain GDP growth around 7.5 percent, maintain CPI growth at roughly 3.5 percent, create more than 100 million urban jobs, keep the urban unemployment rate under 4.6 percent and work to tie resident income growth with economic growth. The goal of GDP growth is set at 7.5 percent to ensure employment, creating job opportunities in cities and transferring more of the rural labor force to cities, which in turn will increase income and improve people’s wellbeing. Maintaining CPI growth at around 3.5 percent will protect residents from the impact of rising prices and show the government's determination and confidence to control inflation.

Second, the government will make overall plans to secure and improve people's wellbeing. According to the report, this year the government will set employment issues as a foundation for people's wellbeing, adhere to the strategy of giving priority to employment and proactive employment policies, and provide better service for people who are hunting for jobs or starting a business, especially for college graduates and those facing difficulties in the job search. Taking income as the source of people's wellbeing, the government will complete regular wage growth mechanisms for enterprise employees and reform the payment system for State-owned enterprises, governmental departments, public institutes and medical staff to properly increase income.

Considering social insurance as the foundation of people's wellbeing, the government will reform the social aid system, establish a unified system of endowment insurance in both urban and rural areas, and find ways to link it with the employee pension system and reform the endowment insurance system for governmental departments, thus enhancing the fairness of social security. Setting housing for all as a goal, the government will intensify work on government-subsidized housing projects for low-income families, merge the construction of public rental housing and low-rent public housing and perfect their withdrawal systems, innovate investing and financing mechanisms and tools for policy-related housing, and provide long-term stable and reasonable financial support for affordable housing construction. Moreover, the government will focus on perfecting institutional mechanisms; establishing supervision mechanisms for the whole process from production, transportation and consumption; and creating a system where the whole society takes part in governance and accountability. The government will not only improve supervision mechanisms for food and drug safety but also encourage all people to join in food safety supervision.

Third, the government will make improving people's lives the ultimate goal. It will also enhance social construction. According to the report, the government will pay more attention to fairness in implementing a strategy that gives priority to education and continue diverting more educational resources to central and western regions and rural areas. The government will also improve the environment, teacher quality and child nutrition in schools with weak compulsory education in poverty-stricken areas. In medical treatment and public health, the government will both reform the mechanism and improve standards to solve problems in a Chinese way. On one hand, the government will reform and integrate medicare systems for urban and rural people, enhance medicare for major illness, and perfect the system for basic drugs and new mechanisms for the operation of grassroots medical institutions. On the other hand, the government will continue improving financial aid for urban and rural medicare and raising per capita subsidy standards for basic public health service. Fourth, the government will emphasize the wellbeing of rural people. According to the report, this year the government will continue working on improving the infrastructure of water, electricity, transportation, natural gas and communication in rural areas. It will reconstruct 260 dilapidated houses and 2 million kilometers of highway; resolve water security problems for 60 million rural people; and pay attention to rural left-behind children, women and the elderly. Meanwhile, the government will innovate ways to reduce poverty, narrow the work scope by focusing on the regional development of large stretches of poor areas, and lift over 100 million people out of poverty. All these measures will greatly contribute to the construction of a new countryside and the integration of urban and rural development.

Authors: Han Jun,vice minister of Development Research Center of the State Council, Jin Sanlin, research fellow of Development Research Center of the State Council

Source: March 28,2014 People's Daily