Tax, education fees and healthcare are among the top issues people want addressed by China's top legislative and advisory bodies, the National People's Congress (NPC), next week.

An online poll on Sina.com, one of the country's most popular websites, said rocketing property prices, lax food safety supervision and misappropriated social security should also be a priority.

An overwhelming 76 percent of the 11,577 respondents said medical care and the reform of the country's medical system was their primary concern.

The poll echoes a 2006 national survey, which showed that 48.9 percent of Chinese people did not bother or could not afford to see a doctor when they were ill. And 29.6 percent refused a doctor's advice to be hospitalized because the cost was too high.

Other similar polls launched by websites as Xinhua.net revealed similar results.

"With food, education, healthcare and housing as the essential needs, we cannot live a good life without a fair social system extended to these fields," Wu Jian, a resident of Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, said.

Complaints on social issues increased in recent years, sparked by successive food safety accidents and social security scandals.

Zheng Gongcheng, a NPC deputy and professor with Renmin University of China, said that for years much energy had been put on China's economic growth and its reform.

"However, the key task for the government this year is to let all people share the achievement the country has made," Zheng was quoted by the Southern Weekend as saying.

"It has come to a point that social inequality should be ended.

"That is why social concerns are in the spotlight for this year's sessions."

But Zheng also said that the central leadership had already made efforts to address social concerns such as health.

This was evident in the government's plans to continue extending its health care network in rural areas and in urban communities, he said.

The rural cooperative healthcare system will cover at least 80 percent of counties this year.

Minister of Health Gao Qiang also has pledged to reform the country's medical care system in 2007, and will include reducing health care costs.

Additionally, there are plans from this year to exempt all students in rural areas from various fees in their nine-year compulsory education.

It has already exempted students in rural areas of western China from compulsory education fees. The exemption policy will be expanded to the central and eastern regions.

(China Daily 03/02/2007 page3)