Promoting people's well-being

In view of the public's high expectations for further reforms, the new leadership should focus on those that improve people's well-being.

According to a recent People's Daily article, to improve people's livelihoods, the new round of widely anticipated reforms should first properly handle relations between the government and the market and give the market an unrestricted role in efforts to make a bigger cake.

People look to buy a house at the sales center of a real estate company in Xuchang, Henan province, March 17, 2013. [Geng Guoqing / Asianewsphoto]

Given that substantial rises in people's standards of living cannot dispense with a forcible prop to bolster sustainable and steady economic development, the pending reforms should be aimed at helping promote fair competition, reduce obstructive administrative approval procedures and lower the threshold for market access. These would release more vigor in the national economy and improve its quality and efficiency.

A substantial improvement in people's livelihoods also depends on whether the government can really transform its functions and undertake its due responsibilities in safeguarding social equity and justice, and providing public services.

A series of thorny social problems, ranging from how to set up a more reasonable income distribution system to fairer distribution of pension, healthcare, education and housing resources, all need the government to perform its duties as a public services provider, while not overextending its responsibilities.

How to have hundreds of millions of migrant workers enjoy access to the same social security coverage as urban residents also requires that the authorities show courage and make some institutional breakthroughs in the reform of the long-entrenched household registration system.

The government should take effective measures to curb the widening wealth gap and promote equity. With tangible achievements from its policy of allowing some regions and people to become rich earlier than others, it is time for the country to make some policy adjustments to facilitate common prosperity. Promoting a more equitable income distribution will not inevitably dent the interests of high-income groups, and an equitable and harmonious society is in the long-term interests of the rich.

To raise people's living standards, the country should also employ a series of economic means and leverages to conserve resources and establish an environmentally friendly society to ease growing public anger at the deteriorating environment as the result of the extensive economic model.

(China Daily 11/05/2013 page8)