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

9. Ensure and improve people's wellbeing

1) Implementing a more active employment policy. We will improve tax policies that support employment, implement all policies aimed at helping college graduates find jobs or start their own businesses, and provide good employment services to unemployed graduates. We will give stronger support for those experiencing employment difficulties, and work to reemploy those who lost their jobs due to the phasing-out of excess production capacity. We will strengthen vocational skills training and public employment services for rural migrant workers. We will become better able to provide community employment services.

2) Holistically developing the social security systems for both urban and rural residents. We will establish a unified basic old-age insurance system for rural and non-working urban residents, and raise the basic pensions for enterprise retirees. We will accelerate integration of the basic medical insurance systems for rural and non-working urban residents, increase medical insurance benefits, promote major disease insurance for rural and non-working urban residents, and make it possible for on-the-spot settlement of medical expenses wherever they are incurred. We will improve the subsistence allowance system for both urban and rural residents, and comprehensively establish a temporary assistance system. We will become better able to provide public services related to social security.

3) Developing social programs more quickly. We will promote the balanced development of compulsory education; improve the basic operating conditions of poorly built and run schools providing compulsory education in poor areas; give the children of rural migrant workers in cities the same access to education as local urban children; and continue to raise the proportion of rural students enrolled in key institutions of higher education. We will accelerate the establishment of an employment-oriented modern vocational education system. In 2014, plans call for enrolling 6.98 million undergraduate students and 802,000 graduate students in regular institutions of higher learning, including 632,000 full-time graduate students. We will strengthen the medical and public health services systems in urban and rural areas, improve the mechanism for responding to public health emergencies and preventing and controlling major diseases, and support nongovernmental capital in the running of medical institutions. We will promote the policy of allowing couples to have two children if either parent is an only child, and become better able to provide population and family planning services. We will implement the China Program for the Development of Women and Children and the National Plan for the Development of Children in Poor Areas. We will improve rehabilitation and nursing care facilities for people with disabilities. We will continue to implement cultural projects that benefit the people, quicken development of public cultural undertakings including the press and publishing, radio and television, and literature and art as well as the culture industry, and better preserve and make use of our cultural and natural heritages. We will promote the flourishing of philosophy and the social sciences. We will improve tourism infrastructure and actively develop tourism related to the early history of the CPC. We will improve the public service system for promoting national fitness.

4) Guaranteeing adequate housing and regulating the real estate market to a suitable degree. We will adhere to the principle of providing tailor-made guidance, progressing step by step and holding each level of government responsible for their decisions, and quickly solve the housing problem for people in the low-to-middle income levels. We will continue to construct government-subsidized housing in cities and towns; renovate rundown urban areas and rural homes; increase support for building supporting infrastructure; combine the operations of the parallel systems of low-priced rental housing and public rental housing into one; and strengthen the follow-up management of distribution and operational maintenance. We will implement policies for regulating the real estate market, and promote the establishment of a permanent mechanism for the healthy development of the real estate market.

5) Making innovations in social governance and public services. We will reorganize community public service resources; improve the platform for managing comprehensive community services; and promote the government's open and transparent procurement of social services. We will resolutely correct all actions harmful to people's interests.

We will continue to implement the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement between the mainland and Hong Kong and Macao, and accelerate the liberalization of trade in services with the two regions. We will implement the central leadership's policies and measures for supporting Hong Kong's economic development and strengthening economic cooperation with Hong Kong to boost economic development and improve people's wellbeing in Hong Kong. We will support Macao in becoming a world center of tourism and leisure and in using the development of Hengqin as a pivot to diversify its economy. We will promote the institutionalization of the economic relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits, quickly complete the follow-up talks on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement across the Straits, and improve the level of economic, trade and industrial cooperation between the mainland and Taiwan.

Fellow Deputies,

Accomplishing all the work for economic and social development in 2014 is an arduous task and a great responsibility. 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 important thought of Three Represents and the Scientific Outlook on Development as our guide, willingly accept the oversight of the NPC, and seek comments and suggestions from the CPPCC National Committee with an open mind. We will fortify our confidence, bestir ourselves, blaze new trails with a pioneering spirit, and surmount difficulties as we promote sustainable, sound economic development and social harmony and stability.