The Progress Made in the Field of Basic Livelihood Security in China since the 16th CPC National Congress
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 20, 2012
Since the 16th CPC National Congress, the national Civil Affair System, sticking to the working principle of being oriented on the people, helping the people with their difficulties, and serving the people, has implemented its basic functions to safeguard the people's livelihood, fulfill the people's rights, and protect the people's interests. Pushing forward the social development with the focuse on the safeguard and improvement of the livelihood of the people, it has always put first the security of the basic livelihood of the people with difficulties and the satisfaction of the people of their basic needs, and has made its obligated contribution for the realization of sharing the fruits of the reform and development with the people and enhancing the harmony and stability of the society.
1. Establishment of the Basic Social Assistance System
In the past decade, the social assistance system of China has achieved its historic transfer from temporary and simple social assistance to institutional and comprehensive social assistance. The level of management, informatization and standardization of social assistance has been improved obviously and the basic livelihood of the people with difficulties has been guaranteed by reliable institutions.
The reform and innovation of social assistance system has been speeding up.The subsistence system has covered both urban and rural areas. The providing of "Five Guarantees" in rural areas has achieved its historic transfer from rural collective mutual assistance to the assistance by government financial support. The overall system of medical aid has been developed, and the pilot project on medial aid for severe diseases has been operated. The system of forced reception and repatriation of street people has been abolished, and the social assistance system for street people has been developed on free and voluntary basis, and special measures have been taken to help street children, such as providing protection, education and behaviour modification, and family reunion assistance. Temporary assistance system has been developed in 26 provinces. The standard of social assistance funding has been connected to the price index in most places.
The connection of different assistance systems has been strengthened. Pilot program to verify the family income of applicants for assistance has been operated in 143 cities and the inter-departmental, multilayer and classified family income verification system has been established. The connection of different assistance policies, including policies on urban and rural subsistence, poverty alleviation and development, low-rent housing in cities and towns, rebuilding of houses in danger in villages, education and medical assistance, justice assistance, the support for re-employment, and policies on the reduction of charges on water, electricity, heating, transportation and communication. A social assistance framework has been established on the basis of subsistence system, "Five Guarantees" in rural areas, which is supported themetic assistance and supplemented by temporary assistance, covering both urban and rural areas with various projects and comprehensive functions.
The standard of assistance and subsidies has been improved substantially. From 2002 to 2011, the average standard of monthly subsistence allowances for the beneficiaries in urban areas has been raised from 148 Yuan to 288 Yuan; the annual subsistence allowances for the rural beneficiaries has been raised from the 840 Yuan by the end of 2007 when the system was initially established to 1718 Yuan in 2011; the standard of the subsidies for the beneficiaries of "Five Guarantees" under institutional care has been raised from 1608 Yuan in 2006 to 3400 Yuan in 2011, and from 1224.5 Yuan to 2470 Yuan for those under home care. The population who is enjoying urban subsistence is at a stable level of 23 million, and the population enjoying rural subsistence rose from 15.93 million before the system was established to 53.06 million in 2011; and the population enjoying "Five Guarantees" rose from 2.133 million in 2002 to 5. 51 million by now. The number of urban vagrants and beggars without sources of income who have been helped is 12.872 million person-times, street children 1.2 million person-times, and the number has reached to 2.41 million person-times and 179,000 person-times separately in 2011; the population being helped all the year round is more than 81 million, taking a percentage of 5.9% of the total population. Since 2009, the central government has allocated 35.56 billion Yuan of Spring Festival allowance for groups including beneficiaries of subsistence and "Five Guarantees" and etc. for 3 years; the total amount of assistance funding at all levels has been raised from 17.23 billion Yuan to 164.7 billion Yuan, increasing by 8.56 times.
2. Remarkable Enhancement on the Ability of Disaster Reduction and Disaster Relief
In the past decade, the departments of Civil Affairs, together with other relevant departments, have successfully accomplished the emergency relief and post-disaster reconstruction task for the low-temperature freezing rain and snow in the South, the Wenchuan Earthquake, Qinghai Yushu Earthquake, Gansu Zhouqu Mountain Torrents and Mud-rock Flow.
Natural disaster relief steped into the track of legalization. In 2010, the State Council published the "Regulation on Natural Disaster Relief", which fully regulats the disaster relief; in 2005, the State Council published "Emergency Pre-plan on National Natural Disaster Relief", which has been revised in 2011; and according to it, each level of government has established their own emergency pre-plan and relevant matching systems. The National Committee for Disaster Reduction was set up, and established a comparatively complete emergency response system of disaster relief and comprehensive coordination system of disaster reduction and disaster relief.
The subsidy program for disaster relief has been continuingly improved. A few new subsidies have been put on the list, inculing drought disaster subsidy, which is 60 yuan per person; transition living subsidy, 10 yuan per person per day under the third or fourth level of national emergency response for disaster relief, and another 0.5 kilogram food per person per day for three months; some new programs have also been introduced into the relief work, including the consoling program for the bereaved family and allocation program for "three lonesomeness" people , and the people detained in highway and railway, about 90 million person-times of people have been assisted through the programs.
Subsidy standard of disaster relief has been increased. The subsidy standard of collapsed house caused by disaster has been increased from 300 Yuan per room in 2002 to 10,000 Yuan per household in 2011, and 14,000 Yuan per household in cold high altitude area, and up to 20,000 Yuan in some provinces; the food subsidy for disaster affected people in winter and spring famine time increased from 30 Yuan per person in 2002 to 90 Yuan per person. The central special transfer payment for living subsidy of natural disaster increased from 2.43 billion Yuan in 2002 to 8.64 billion Yuan in 2011.
The equipments and capacity for disaster reduction and disaster relief have been improved. Eighteen central disaster storage houses has been built, and emphasis has been placed on the construction of the disaster relief material storage facilities and emergency sanctuary at each local level, a well-arranged disaster relief material storage network has been primarily formed at five levels, including central, provincial, municipal, county-level and township-level. All kinds of natural disaster supervising station networks and alerting and forecasting systems have been improved, which can help provide basic assistance to people affected by disasters within 24 hours. The number of disaster information reporters grows to more than 630,000. May 12th is set as national "Day for Disaster Prevention and Disaster Reduction", and activities of building model communities for comprehensive disaster reduction have been carried out at a wide range.
3. Gradual transformation of the social welfare system to moderate universal welfare system
In the past decade, the policy of social welfare in our country has been improving, the scope of beneficiaries has been expanded gradually from the special groups, such as alone elderly, the disabled, the orphans, and abandoned babies, to all groups in society, the social welfare system is trasforming from gap-filling welfare to moderate universal welfare.
Great development of the welfare work for the elderly. Until the end of 2011, there were 15 province have established living subsidy system for the elderly who are above 80 years old, 16 provinces have established service subsidy for the elderly who live in difficulties, all the provinces have published preferential policies for the elderly. The numbers of welfare institutions for the elderly and beds for the elderly grows from 37,600 and 1.149 million in 2002 to 40,900 and 3.51 million in 2011; the operation system is transferred from government managment to the involvement of different parterners under the leadership of the government. The social service system for the elderly has been preliminary established, which is based on home care, supported by the community, and supplemented by welfare institutions, and the funding for the service provision is guaranteed.
The social welfare system for the disabled has been improved continually. The national government has formed up the guidelines for accelerating the promotion of the system development of social security and service for the disabled, and has published the income tax free policy for the enterprises which produce and assemble special productions for the disabled, by which preferential policy for the welfare enterprises has been improved. Supporting policies has gradually carried out to provide social insurance subsidy and medical assistance for the disabled, which has provided institutional guarantee for the disabled in the areas of basic living, medical care, rehabilitation, education, employment and etc.
Overall institutional arrangement has been made for orphans. The State Council published the "Suggestions on Enforcing the Security Work for the Orphans", which makes overall institutional arrangements for the welfare system for orphans in the areas of care, education, medical care, rehabilitation, employment after growing up, housing and etc. It has set up the minimum standard for the care of orphans, which is 1000 Yuan per person per month in welfare institutions and 600 Yuan per person per month in families. The central finance budget allocates special fund to local government for subsidizing orphans for their basic cost of living. It is actively explored to include children who is under nobody's care in real life into the security system according to different situations.
The basic social services for the public have expanded increasingly. The nationwide network for marriage registration has been basically set up, free basic funeral service policy has been gradually implemented. The community public service, voluntary mutual help service, convenient comercial services have a great development. By the end of 2011, there were 160,000 community service facilities in urban and rural areas, providing comprehensive services for 23.6% communities. Great efforts for developing nonprofit social organizations have been made, and the social organizations are growing healthy at an average rate of 10% in year. The geographic name service has also been expanded and developed greatly. In 2011, the Organization Department of CPC, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other 16 Ministries and Committees together published the "Suggestions on the Enforcement of the Development of the Professional Team of Social Work", which provided institutional arrangements for professional social work.
Leap-forward development has been achieved in the work of welfare lottery. In 2009, the State Council published the "Regulation on Lottery Management", which effectively regulated the issuing and managing work of welfare lottery. The sale of welfare lottery grows every year, and has raised in total 188.55 billion Yuan welfare fund in the past decade, which has greatly supported the development of social welfare work and other welfare works.
4. Innovative development has been achieved in the work on supporting the armed forces, providing settlement for discharged soldiers and retired military officers, and providing preferential treatment for family dependants of servicemen.
Over the past decade, through constant reform and innovation, the system of supporting the armed forces and the veterans has played an irreplaceable role in protecting the rights and interests of the target population, serving the modernization of national defense and the armed forces, and maintaining the stability of the country as well as the reform and development.
The new system of the settlement of discharged soldiers has been established and put into effect. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress revised "Military Service Law". The State Council and Central Military Commission introduced the "Regulations on the Settlement of Discharged Soldiers". The relevant supportive policies have been improved. The work on the settlement of discharged soldiers used to be prescriptive, which means the government took full responsibility of the work arrangement for the urban discharged soldiers. Nowadays, it turns out to be a combined multi-channel system under the principle of urban-rural integration and supportive employment, including the alternatives which are as follows: finding jobs on their own after issuing of discharge pay, getting employment through the arrangement of government, cared and supported by the state, retirement, going back to schools, etc. This is a historical transformation.
The scope of preferential treatment coverage has been expanded. On the original basis, a large number of personnel has been brought into the coverage of regular national pension and subsidies, including but not limited to 1,246,000 discharged soldiers with diseases, 3,363,000 rural discharged soldiers over the age of sixty, 237,000 aged children of martyrs, 200,000 rural CPC members who joined the Party before the founding of the Republic, as well as urban CPC members who also joined the Party before the founding of the Republic yet did not enjoy honorary retirement treatment. At the end of 2011, a target population of 9,526,000 had received preferential treatment and been covered by the regular national pension and subsidies.
The standards of preferential treatment have been promoted comprehensively. The standard of financial aid to key entitled groups has been increased by 15-20% year by year. The lowest standard of lump-sum commendation subsidy to family dependents of martyrs has been risen from RMB 68,000 yuan to almost 1 million yuan. In 2011, the central government spent RMB 29.5 billion yuan in the field of preferential treatment-more than 20 times that of 2002.
The settlement and service system for the retired military officers and discharged servicemen with wound, illness or disability has been continually improved. For the last 8 years, more than 80,000 retired military officers have been properly resettled each year. More than 20,000 discharged servicemen, who are with wound, illness or disability and are still cared in the armed forces, have been included in a 3-year settlement program. B y May of 2012, up to 72.4% of them have been settled.
The work of "two supports" has made solid progress. There appears new modes of "two supports" such as the mode of supporting the armed forces by means of science and technology, intelligence and culture, and the mode of supporting the armed forces through "new economic organizations and new social organizations". The number of "national two supports model cities/counties" has been soaring from 245 in 2002 to 391. Moreover, there are more than 100,000 organizations of supporting the armed forces such as associations, foundations and workstations, and more than 6 million "two supports" service organizations, who are active at grassroots level both in urban and rural areas all around the year.
5. Charity work has developed rapidly.
For the last decade, governments at all levels have formulated development programs, improved laws, regulations and policies, enhanced incentives and support, established mechanism of information release, and strengthened capacity building, through which significant progress has been made in the field of charity development.
Policy guidance has been further strengthened. The Ministry of Civil Affairs successively promulgated 2 five-year guidelines on the development of charities, issued the "Guidelines on the Information Release of Public Welfare Charity Donations" and held honoring activities for "China Charity Award" annually. Some provinces have promulgated local laws and regulations to support charity undertaking through supportive policies, charity organizations incubation, and charity sector capacity building especially in the field of government purchase of public service.
The charity organizations have developed rapidly and the scale of donations has been expanding. The number of foundations has increased from 954 in 2003 to 2,614 by the end of 2011 and there are now more than 10,000 professional charity organizations. The total amount of social donations is 2.08 billion yuan in 2002, more than 100 billion yuan in 2008, and more than 80 billion yuan in 2011. The people in difficulties benefits more and more form charities.
Voluntary service has developed extensively. A huge group of voluntary organizations have emerged and teams of volunteers have been growing. The volunteers have played an important role in the work of disaster relief of Wenchuan earthquake, Yushu earthquake and Zhouqu mountain torrents and landslide, as well as in the major events of Beijing Olympic Games, Shanghai World Expo and Guangzhou Asian Games. The community volunteers have made important contributions to community development, offering their unkown dedication in the street buildings and villages. In 2011, there have been total 92.726 million hours of voluntary services provided by 9,502,000 person-times in social services.
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