Equal Access to Basic Public Services by 2020

In his report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary of the CPC Hu Jintao proposed a new requirement for social development.

He suggested that the Party provide equal access to public services across the whole of China by 2020.

Education authorities in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province have announced a plan to ease educational access restrictions for "migrant students" in 2013.

By doing so, it will become the first province in China to allow the children of migrant workers to take the National College Entrance Exam in the city where they reside.

Currently, most provinces require the children of migrant workers to return to their birthplaces to take the exam, thus creating unfair opportunities for test takers.

Besides education, unequal access to other public services exists in China, including social security benefits, medical and old-age care, and housing.

Earlier this week, General Secretary of the CPC Hu Jintao established a goal of setting up a mechanism to offer equal public services to people in urban and rural regions.

CPC National Congress delegate Hu Angang is director of the Institute for Contemporary China Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He interprets the goal from a theoretical angle.

"The CPC Central Committee made the commitment to provide social security coverage for all the people, which means it is committed to socialism, benefiting everyone."

Professor Hu Angang says the current existing inequalities remain because China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will long remain so. But China has already shifted its focus from one of letting some people get rich first to one of "common prosperity."

"I divide China's development into two stages. In the first 20 years of opening up and reform, 'let some people get rich first' was consistent with the laws of economic development. But since the 21st-century, particularly since the 16th National Party Congress in 2002, we have applied the theory of common prosperity into practice. Letting some people get rich first is relatively easy to achieve, but achieving common prosperity is more difficult. It requires the strong political will of the ruling party and national development planning and development strategies."

18th CPC National Congress delegate Zhang Ping is also the minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planner.

He says the commission will need to work harder to achieve the goal of equal access to public services for all.

"The report of the 18th National Congress of the CPC proposed the requirement of achieving equal access to basic public services by the year 2020, which is a more ambitious requirement for us. So we will increase our spending and step up our efforts. We will give greater assistance to rural areas, the western parts of China and regions with financial difficulties, and we will work to better integrate the governments of urban and rural areas to ensure that both urban and rural areas can have equal access to basic public services."

The CPC National Congress is held every five years. The 18th CPC National Congress runs until Wednesday and is expected to elect the Central Committee to lead China to achieve the goals set by this Party Congress.