Full Text: Li's address at WEF annual meeting

Going forward, China needs new sources of dynamism to carry development forward. Dynamism comes from diversity, which sparks wisdom and fosters innovation. Mass entrepreneurship and innovation serves to unleash people's ingenuity and power. It will result in greater demand and residents' consumption, greater social wealth, and greater welfare for the people. More importantly, it will bring opportunity for many and give people the stage to reach life' s full potential. It will also bring about greater social mobility, equity and justice.

Excessive regulation discourages innovation, and healthy competition is the way to prosperity. We will deepen reform of the administrative system. This means we will continue to abolish or delegate to lower-level governments items previously subject to State Council review and approval. We will comprehensively sort out items requiring non-governmental review and approval, and put in place a negative-list approach for market access. This will incentivize market players, and help reduce the possibility of rent-seeking and corruption. We will protect intellectual property rights in accordance with the law, and do our best to foster an environment that encourages entrepreneurship and tolerates failure. Moreover, we will give protection to all sorts of legal property rights.

To transform the traditional engine of growth, we will focus on increasing the supply of public goods and services. China has made remarkable economic achievements, but inadequate supply of public goods and services remains a weak link in development. China' s capital stock on public infrastructure, in per capita terms, is only 38 percent that of Western Europe and 23 percent that of North America. The development of its service sector is 10 percentage points lower than other developing countries at similar development stages. And its rate of urbanization is more than 20 percentage points lower than developed countries. This means a massive space for increasing public goods and services. To deliver such public goods and services to improve people' s lives is the government' s responsibility. They are also important ways to boost domestic demand.

This year, we have identified some key areas for investment, including building railways in central and western provinces, constructing water conservancy projects, rebuilding rundown urban areas and old houses in cities and villages, and preventing and controlling pollutions. The government will increase investment in these areas, and it will not act alone. Efforts will be made to break monopoly and reform the investment and financing systems to encourage the participation of private and foreign capitals. The model of public-private partnership (PPP), Sino-foreign cooperatives and government purchase of services will be adopted to better leverage various investment sources. I have an example here to cite. A few years ago, the plan was made to build a sewage treatment plant in a province in western China, and a total of 335 million RMB yuan was needed. The project later attracted investment from a German water company, with the German side controlling 70 percent of the total shares.