Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government (9)

We will see that effective investment plays a key role in maintaining stable growth and making structural adjustments.

The many weak areas in infrastructure and public services in China and the urgent need for industry upgrading leave vast scope for growth in effective investment. This year, we will launch a number of projects set forth in the 13th Five-Year Plan. More than 800 billion yuan will be invested in railway construction, and investment in road construction will reach 1.65 trillion yuan. A further 20 water conservancy projects will be carried out, and major projects will be launched to develop hydropower, nuclear power, ultra high-voltage power transmission, smart grids, pipelines for oil and gas transmission, and urban rail transit. Central government budgetary investment will be 500 billion yuan. We will deepen the reform of the investment and financing systems. Funds for specific projects will continue to be raised through market-based mechanisms. Local financing platforms will be required to transform themselves and shift toward market-based financing, the securitization of tangible assets such as infrastructure will be explored, and debt financing will be increased. We will improve the public-private partnership model, make good use of the 180 billion yuan in seed funds, and strictly honor contracts in accordance with the law, so as to bring the enthusiasm of private investors to the table.

-- We will advance new urbanization.

Urbanization is the path we need to take to develop a modern China. It is where we will find the greatest potential for domestic demand and the most powerful force for sustaining economic development. This year, we will take the following three major steps regarding urbanization.

First, we will move faster to see that urban residency is granted to more people with rural household registration living in urban areas.

We will deepen reform of the household registration system and relax restrictions on eligibility for urban residency. We will introduce policies for making both the transfer payments and the land designated for urban development granted to the government of a local jurisdiction conditional upon the number of people with rural household registration who are granted permanent urban residency in that jurisdiction. The full range of trials for developing new urbanization will be extended to more areas. Residence cards are important assets for their holders. We must move faster to ensure that permanent urban residents without urban residency are issued residence cards, thus enabling them to enjoy, as provided for by law, the right to access compulsory education, employment, medical care, and other basic public services. We will promote the development of small towns and small and medium-sized cities in the central and western regions to help more rural migrant workers find employment or start businesses in urban areas closer to home so that they do not have to choose between earning money and taking care of the families they leave behind.

Second, we will promote the construction of government-subsidized housing in urban areas and the healthy development of the real estate market.

This year, we will see to it that six million housing units are rebuilt in rundown urban areas and that more people displaced by the rebuilding of such areas receive monetary housing compensation rather than housing. Taking into consideration people's demand for buying homes or improving their housing situation, we will improve the tax and credit policies to support justified personal housing consumption and adopt different policies in different cities as appropriate to their local conditions, in order to cut housing inventory and promote stability in the real estate market. We will put in place a housing system which encourages both renting and purchasing and, over time, enable eligible non-registered urban residents to apply for public rental housing.

Third, we will redouble our efforts to improve urban planning, development, and management.

We will make urban planning more sound, forward-looking, authoritative, and transparent and encourage local governments to integrate their various types of urban plans into a single master plan. Construction will begin on at least 2,000 kilometers of utility tunnels. We will actively promote environmentally friendly buildings and construction materials, make a big push to develop steel understructures and prefabricated modules, accelerate work to ensure adherence to construction standards, and see that the level of technique in building and the quality of construction projects are improved. We will encourage institutional innovation in urban management, work hard to create smart cities,improve public transport networks, address traffic congestion and other prominent problems, and improve living environments so that people can enjoy a more secure, relaxing, and satisfying city life.

-- We will work to improve the layout of development across regions.

We will push ahead with the Belt and Road Initiative, carry out the development plan for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration initiative, and speed up the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt. We will draw up and implement the 13th five-year plan for the large-scale development of the western region, implement a new round of strategies for revitalizing the old industrial bases in the Northeast and other parts of the country, adopt the new ten-year plan for fuelling the rise of the central region, and support the eastern region as it leads the country in making breakthroughs in institutional innovation and coordinated land and maritime development. We will promote the economic transformation and upgrading of resource-dependent regions. We will support the development of old revolutionary base areas, areas with concentrations of ethnic minorities, border areas, and poor areas. We will work out and implement a national maritime strategy, safeguard national maritime rights and interests, protect marine ecosystems and habitats, and open up more space for the blue economy so as to strengthen China's maritime development.

4. Speed up efforts to develop modern agriculture and ensure sustained increases in rural incomes

We will, with as much care and attention as ever, continue focusing on our work related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. We will strengthen policy support for these areas, deepen rural reform, expand the channels through which farmers can find employment and increase their income, and work to ensure that the quality, performance, and competitiveness of agriculture improve.

-- We will speed up structural adjustment in agriculture.

The output of food crops has continued to rise in recent years. This has helped to keep prices stable and ensure people's wellbeing, but it has also resulted in a buildup of excess stockpiles and falling market prices. To resolve this problem, we will improve the pricing mechanisms for agricultural products, while guiding farmers in adjusting what and how much they grow and breed in response to market demand and in making appropriate reductions to the amount of cultivated land devoted to growing corn. Following the principle of letting the market determine prices and delinking subsidies from prices, we will reform in an active yet prudent way the system of corn purchase and storage to ensure reasonable returns for corn-growing farmers. We will adopt a full range of measures to reduce excess stockpiles of food, provide strong support for the processing of agricultural products to increase their value, develop the livestock industry, and extend the agricultural production chain. We will formulate a plan for a new round of initiatives to turn marginal farmland into forest or grassland, with the target for this year being more than one million hectares. There is much to be gained in this, and it must be carried out to full effect.

We will promote the development of suitably scaled-up agricultural operations in diversified forms; improve policy support for family farms, large and specialized agricultural family operations, farming cooperatives, and other emerging forms of agribusiness; and cultivate a new type of skilled farmer. We will encourage farmers, on a voluntary basis and in accordance with relevant laws, to transfer the land they contract to work on in return for compensation, enter into cooperation or association based on land as shares, or place their land under trusteeship. We will deepen the reform of the rural collective property rights system, state farms on reclaimed land, collective forest tenure, state forestry farms, farmland irrigation and water conservancy, and rural supply and marketing cooperatives. (mo