Full text: Report on China's economic, social development plan (15)

2) We will provide employment support to help meet the people' s basic needs. With a view to providing coordinated support to priority groups, such as college graduates, migrant workers, and those having difficulty finding employment, to help them start a business or find employment, we will work to properly resettle workers laid off due to the phasing-out of excess production capacity, carry out the program for promoting the employment of college graduates and providing them with business start-up guidance, flesh out the public service system for employment and business start-ups, and deepen the implementation of the pilot program for supporting rural migrant workers in starting businesses in their hometowns. We will strengthen community-level employment and start-up service facilities and increase employment assistance to ensure people' s basic needs are met. We will fully leverage the role of strategic emerging industries, new forms of business, and major state projects in encouraging employment and business start-ups, while fostering new sources of job creation. We will also promote flexible employment and non-standard employment.

3) We will strengthen the key links of social security. We will release an overall plan for old-age insurance reform, further raise basic pension benefits for retirees, and work to place the social pooling accounts of workers' old-age insurance under unified national management. We will formulate methods for diverting a portion of state capital into social security funds. We will comprehensively advance the integration of the basic medical insurance schemes for rural and non-working urban residents, raise the annual government subsidy for these two schemes to 420 yuan per person, accelerate our work to enable people to settle medical bills incurred in any locality via their basic medical insurance accounts, and increase the cohesion between basic medical insurance and other schemes, such as major disease insurance, medical assistance, and assistance for emergency disease treatment. We will coordinate the development of social assistance systems for urban and rural residents and improve the system for providing services and insurance to people with disabilities and children living in difficult conditions. We will continue to build government-subsidized housing in urban areas and improve the housing conditions of both low- and middle-income groups and people facing difficulties. In 2016, we will renovate six million units of housing in run-down urban areas and 3.14 million dilapidated rural houses.

4) We will see to it that all sectors of society become more involved in providing public services and more people benefit from them. We will establish a national list of basic public services, carry out the national project to upgrade services for the general population, and improve facilities for compulsory education, medical and health care, public cultural services, elderly care, community sports, care and nursing for people with disabilities, social welfare, and basic funeral and interment services. We will increase the provision of public-interest pre-school education, refine the distribution of schools in rural areas, and move faster to help public schools providing compulsory education in urban and rural areas meet standards and to make senior secondary education universal. Some regular institutions of higher learning in developed regions will be selected to implement the program for setting an enrollment quota for students from central and western regions, and we will carry out the program for regular institutions of higher learning to enroll a set number of students from poor areas with pre-conditions for employment after graduation; these programs will help to ensure students from rural and poor areas are unobstructed in continuing their education. We will improve the modern vocational education system and launch programs to integrate vocational education with industry. We will ensure the quality of teaching and the capacity for innovation within institutions of higher learning are improved, and encourage regular undergraduate colleges to shift their focus toward providing applied education if they are in a position to do so. We will see to it that the education resources of schools and educational institutions of all types and at all levels are made available for the provision of urban and rural community-level education as well as education for the elderly. In 2016, regular institutions of higher learning are projected to enroll 7.05 million undergraduate students and 818,000 graduate students. We will speed up the development of the program to ensure a healthy population, reinforce weak areas in the medical services system, better allocate medical and health care resources, strengthen the training of general practitioners and pediatricians, and accelerate the development of tiered medical diagnosis and treatment. We will fully implement the policy for allowing one couple to have two children, enhance the system for providing maternal and child care and related support policies, and promote balanced growth of the population. We will actively develop traditional Chinese medicine and the medicine of ethnic minorities. We will move forward with the trials for comprehensive reform of the elderly services. We will improve basic public service policies so as to facilitate better integration of the migrant population in cities. To promote socialist cultural and ethical progress, we will accelerate cultural reform and development; encourage philosophy and the social sciences to flourish; and develop literature, art, the press, publishing, radio, television, film, and archives. We will develop new types of Chinese-style think tanks. We will accelerate the development of sports such as soccer and winter sports.

We will deepen cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao in the areas of investment, the economy, and trade; put into practice the agreement on trade in services with Hong Kong and Macao under the framework of Closer Economic Partnership Arrangements (CEPA); open the country' s interior wider to Hong Kong and Macao; and comprehensively upgrade the CEPA. We will support Hong Kong and Macao in participating in the development of the Belt and Road Initiative. We will move faster to develop the platforms in Qianhai, Nansha, and Hengqin among others for cooperation between Guangdong and Hong Kong and Macao, and deepen regional cooperation in the pan-Pearl River Delta. We will provide further support for Macao in its efforts to build a platform to facilitate business and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese language countries and appropriately diversify its economy. We will continue to promote the development of cross-Straits economic and trade cooperation to benefit the people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.

Fellow Deputies,

Accomplishing the work for economic and social development in this first year of the 13th Five-Year Plan is an onerous but important task. We will unite even closer around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as General Secretary, hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, take Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development as our guide, and fully implement the guidelines from General Secretary Xi Jinping's major political addresses. We will willingly accept the oversight of the NPC, and seek comments and suggestions from the CPPCC National Committee with an open mind. Let us pool together our hearts and our energy to overcome the difficulties ahead, and work with creativity to ensure a good start to the 13th Five-Year Plan and sustain steady and sound economic and social development.

Tables and Figures

1. Performance of the Main Targets in the 2015 Plan for National Economic and Social Development

2. The Primary, Secondary, and The Tertiary Industries as a Percentage of GDP

3. Urban Jobs Newly Created

4. Non-Financial Inward and Outward Foreign Direct Investment

5. Grain Output

6. Rate of Decline in Energy Consumption per Unit of GDP

7. Increases in Urban and Rural Incomes and the Ratio of Urban Income to Rural Income

8. Urban Government-subsidized Housing Projects and Renovation of Dilapidated Rural Houses

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