Full text: Report on China's economic, social development plan (5)

5. We stepped up efforts to conserve energy, reduce emissions, and protect ecosystems and the environment, making the most significant progress in this regard since the beginning of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan.

We continued to lay emphasis on energy conservation and emissions reduction as priority initiatives in changing the growth model and making structural adjustments. Our policies in this regard began to yield greater cumulative effects.

1) Remarkable results were achieved in energy conservation and emissions reduction.

We reduced energy intensity and controlled the increase in total energy consumption. The share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption reached 11.2%, up 1.1 percentage points over the previous year; energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP dropped by 4.8% and 6.2% respectively; and emissions of sulfur dioxide, chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, and nitrogen oxides declined by 3.4%, 2.47%, 2.9%, and 6.7%, respectively. Efforts to meet the energy conservation and emissions reduction targets of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan made progress on schedule.

2) Good progress was made in ecological and environmental protection.

We made new strides in preventing and controlling air, water, and soil pollution. We vigorously carried out a series of major projects aimed at controlling pollution in key drainage basins, demonstrating the application of denitrification technologies in facilities other than power plants, and controlling air pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and adjacent areas; and further improved mechanisms for regional coordination of pollution prevention and control. We accelerated the comprehensive prevention and control of pollution from motor vehicles. The percentages of urban sewage treated and household waste safely disposed reached 90.15% and 90.3% respectively. Water consumption per 10,000 yuan of value-added by industry totaled 63.5 cubic meters, dropping by 5.6%. We made enhanced efforts to protect and restore major ecosystems such as wetlands, forests, grasslands, and areas of biological diversity and richness; and continued to carry out ecological projects to convert marginal farmland back to forest, turn grazing land back into grassland, protect virgin forests, and build key forest shelterbelts. A total of 6.027 million hectares of land were afforested.

3) Further progress was made in responding to climate change.

We promulgated the National Plan for Responding to Climate Change (2014-2020), and issued the China-U.S. Joint Announcement on Climate Change, stating that China aims to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. We intensively carried out pilot projects to encourage low-carbon growth in provinces, regions, cities, and industrial parks; and made steady progress in developing a market for the trading of carbon emission rights.

6. We safeguarded and improved people's wellbeing and ensured social harmony and stability.

We focused our energies on meeting basic needs, helping those in the greatest difficulty, and improving institutional building related to people's wellbeing. We remained committed to doing everything in our power to increase funding for areas related to people's wellbeing, despite facing serious budgetary constraints.

1) Incomes continued to rise.

We deepened the reform of the income distribution system; promoted the growth of rural incomes through multiple channels; raised basic pension benefits for enterprise retirees for the tenth consecutive year; and built up synergy between measures to boost incomes and employment policies, to the benefit of the general public. Nationwide per capita disposable income increased by 8% in real terms. Rural per capita disposable income rose by 9.2% and urban per capita disposable income by 6.8%, both in real terms. The ratio of urban disposable income to rural net income per capita dropped to less than 3:1 for the first time in 13 years.

2) The social safety net continued to branch out.

Social security coverage was comprehensively expanded. A total of 366 million urban residents have been brought under the coverage of the basic old-age insurance; and 477 million rural residents have been covered by the new type of rural old-age insurance. We implemented a unified basic old-age insurance system for rural and nonworking urban residents, and raised the level of basic pension benefits provided under the system, benefiting 143 million elderly people. The rates of participation in the basic medical insurance systems for working and nonworking urban residents and the new rural cooperative medical care system all stood above 95%. We did our utmost to provide post-disaster relief and assistance to Ludian and Jinggu, which both were hit by earthquakes, and to other areas hit by major natural disasters. Post-disaster recovery and reconstruction efforts progressed in an orderly fashion.

3) Solid progress was made in the construction of government-subsidized housing.

Making use of central government expenditure, corporate debt financing, and credit funds, we provided additional support to government-subsidized housing projects such as the rebuilding of run-down areas. Construction on 5.11 million government-subsidized housing units was essentially completed, and construction on an additional 7.4 million units commenced.(Mo