The CPC Central Committee has set 10 major targets for China's economic and social development over the next five years, a top CPC official told a news briefing Thursday.

1. Stick to a strategy of boosting domestic demand, and maintaining stable and relatively fast economic growth. Macro-economic control measures will be strengthened and improved, and investment structures optimized.

2. Push forward rural modernization and accelerate the construction of a new socialist countryside. Pan said that the country had had good harvests for six successive years from 2004 to 2009, and this year is also expected to see a good harvest. China's grain production capacity has reached 500 billion kilograms. But improving rural infrastructure and public services in the countryside remains a necessity.

3. Establish a modern industrial system and enhance competitiveness by modernizing agriculture, transforming and upgrading the manufacturing sector, and accelerating the growth of the service sector.

4. Promote regional development and actively and steadily push forward urbanization. The western regions, lagging behind the prosperous east coastal areas, should make development their top priority. In 2009, China's urbanization rate (including migrant workers who have lived in cities for more than six months) reached 41.6 percent. With improving patterns of urbanization, Pan forecast that within five years the rate may exceed 50 percent. This will also be an important factor in boosting economic and social development.

5. Build a resource-saving and environmentally-friendly society. This is central to the transformation of China's economic development model. A culture of ecological conservation needs to be promoted and effective measures taken to cope with climate change, Pan said.

6. Reinforce the strategy of renewal through science and education and cultivate talented personnel to build an innovative country.

7. Improve people's standard of living by developing a basic public service system covering both urban and rural areas, in line with the country's overall development. Urban and rural residents should receive higher incomes, and measures should be taken to accelerate the development of education and medical care.

8. Promote cultural development and the prosperity of the cultural industries. It is the first time a plenum has raised the issue of strengthening the cultural industry, Pan added.

9. Accelerate reform and improve the socialist market economic system. The function of government needs to be transformed; the socio-economic system needs to be improved; the reform of administrative system should be promoted; the reform of the fiscal and taxation systems should be accelerated; reform of the financial system should be deepened; and reforms in culture, society and education systems should be pushed forward.

10. Establish a mutually-beneficial strategy of further opening up to the outside world. Efforts should be made to improve the international competitiveness of Chinese enterprises, and create a favorable global environment, Pan said.

(China.org.cn October 23, 2010)