Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government (15)

Making Sustained Efforts to Improve Living Standards

and Promote Social Development

The only way to build a country is to enrich its people. With increasing people' s quality of life as our objective, we will accelerate the development of social programs, reform and improve the income distribution system, do everything possible to increase people's incomes, and promote social equity, justice, harmony, and progress.

We will work hard to promote business development and increase employment.

We will continue to give top priority to employment and the creation of jobs by encouraging entrepreneurship. This year, the number of college graduates will reach 7.49 million, a record high. We need to strengthen employment guidance and education on starting up in business; implement the plan to help college graduates find jobs and encourage them to look to the community level to find employment; and carry out the plan to guide university students toward starting their own businesses and support them in creating start-ups in emerging industries.

We will work to help people who have lost their jobs due to structural adjustments or measures to address overcapacity to find new employment, and coordinate efforts to ensure employment can be found for people who move from rural to urban areas to find work, vulnerable urban residents who have difficulty finding jobs, and decommissioned military personnel. We will put into effect the plan on providing vocational training for migrant workers, and implement and improve the unemployment insurance policy on supporting enterprises that keep people in their jobs. We will draw on comprehensive governance to deal with the "missing" or delayed wages of migrant workers, improve the mechanisms for supervising the handling of labor issues and disputes, and ensure the law fully functions as the protector of the rights and interests of anyone in employment.

We will strengthen social security and increase individual income.

The basic pension benefits for enterprise retirees will be increased by 10%. The monthly basic pension benefits for rural and non-working urban residents will be uniformly raised from 55 yuan to 70 yuan per person. We will work to place the basic pensions of workers in urban areas under unified national management. The premiums will be lowered for insurance schemes such as the unemployment insurance scheme and the workplace injury insurance scheme. We will improve the mechanism for adjusting minimum wages. We will take steps to reform the pension system for employees of Party and government offices and public institutions and at the same time improve their pay systems, and we will make policies weighted toward benefiting government and Party employees at the community level. A system will be instituted under which public servants of Party and government offices at and below the county level can be promoted in terms of both their post and their rank, and are paid accordingly.

We will increase aid for treating major and serious diseases and implement the temporary-assistance scheme nationwide so that people with urgent or special needs will have somewhere to go for support, and will be able to get that support straight away. We will develop sound welfare and service systems for vulnerable groups including children living in difficult circumstances, the very elderly, elderly people with disabilities, people with serious disabilities, and people with disabilities who are living in poverty. We will continue to raise subsistence allowances for rural and urban residents and increase benefits and living allowances for entitled groups. Policies for increasing wages and social security benefits have a bearing on a great number of people; their implementation by governments at all levels must be completely satisfactory. Ensuring people' s wellbeing is a top priority for the government, and we must do all we can to make sure that basic needs are met.

We will promote fair access to and strengthen the quality of education.

Education is an endeavor for today, but a source of hope for tomorrow. We need to foster virtue through education and ensure that students develop a strong sense of social responsibility, innovative thinking, and an ability to put ideas into practice. We should ensure that students strengthen their dedication to socialism with Chinese characteristics. We will deepen the reform to expand the responsibility of provincial-level governments over local education, the comprehensive reform of colleges and universities, as well as the reform of the school examination and enrollment systems.

We will move more quickly to help all schools providing compulsory education to meet standards, and improve basic conditions in boarding schools and schools that are poorly built and operated. We will implement the policy of enabling the children of migrant workers to receive compulsory education in the cities and towns where they and their parents live and improve policies that enable them to continue on into secondary and college education.

We will work to comprehensively promote the development of a modern vocational education system. We will guide a number of local undergraduate institutions to transform themselves into applied colleges. We will support the development of higher education in the central and western regions by offering them assistance through pairing programs, and continue to raise the admission rate for those taking the college entrance exams in the central and western regions and in provinces with larger populations. We will work to develop world-class universities and disciplines. (mo