SCIO briefing on fully implementing new development philosophy and ensuring a good start of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025)
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 12, 2021
China Daily:
We know that topics involving education, medical care, elderly care, and childcare are closely related to people's lives and thus are among their concerns. What new measures can be expected in this year's draft outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan to address public worries and concerns? Thank you.
Hu Zucai:
The five-year plan is as much a matter of state as of every household. The draft outline follows the people-centered development philosophy; sets out the overarching goal of meeting the people's ever-growing needs for a better life; focuses on well-rounded human development and the improvement of people's lives; stresses to ensure that public services are inclusive, meet essential needs and ensure basic living standards for people in difficulty; steps up efforts to promote equal access to basic public services, and puts forward a series of development goals, indicators, policies, and measures to ensure that the fruits of development will benefit all the people more equitably and provide a higher-quality and higher-level of access to childcare, education, employment, medical services, elderly care, housing, and social assistance.
In terms of major indicators, those indicators related to people's livelihoods are the largest. Seven of the 20 major indicators in the draft outline concern people's livelihoods, accounting for more than a third of the total -- the highest of all past five-year plans. These indicators cover employment, income, education, medical care, elderly care, and childcare, and other areas of people's livelihoods. This fully demonstrates that we have placed greater importance on improving people's wellbeing.
Regarding employment and income, we will mainly step up efforts to offer more and better job opportunities and make steady progress to raise personal incomes. Employment is the cornerstone of wellbeing, while income is its wellspring. We will implement an employment-first strategy and give top priority to promoting employment in economic and social development. We will offer more job opportunities; improve the employment support system for key groups such as college graduates, rural migrant workers, and demobilized military personnel; assist people with disabilities, zero-employment families, and other groups facing difficulty in securing work; and keep the surveyed urban unemployment rate within 5.5%. We will improve the lifelong skills training system and continue to launch vocational skills training programs on a large scale to tackle structural unemployment. We will give special attention to raising the income of low-income groups and expanding the middle-income population. We will ensure growth in personal income that is basically in step with economic growth, and improve the mechanism for reasonable wage increases. We will raise the proportion of labor remuneration in primary distribution, improve the distribution mechanism to allow innovation to have its due share of income, and increase property income through multiple channels.
In terms of education, we will develop a quality education system. We will stay committed to giving priority to developing education to make it fairer and better. We will continue to improve the conditions of schools in counties with weak education foundations, places with high population inflow, and rural areas. We will build and renovate more than 4,000 primary and middle schools to promote quality, balanced and integrated development of urban and rural compulsory education. We will speed up efforts to strengthen weaknesses in pre-school education, build and renovate 20,000 kindergartens, offer more than 4 million places in government-funded and privately-run non-profit kindergartens. We will endeavor to deal with difficulties brought on by expensive fees and the shortage of preschools, and raise the gross enrollment ratio for preschool education to 90%. We will consolidate and improve the level of universal senior high school education to increase its gross enrollment ratio to over 92%. We will launch an initiative to improve the quality of modern vocational and technical education, develop a group of high-level vocational and technical colleges and training bases as well as relevant disciplines to cultivate various types of skilled craftsmen across the country. We will develop world-class universities and disciplines for different categories, encourage some regular undergraduate institutions to shift their focus toward providing applied education, support the development of 100 undergraduate institutions in the central and western regions of China, and raise the gross enrollment ratio for higher education to 60%.
With regard to healthcare, we will work to build a Healthy China in all respects. We will develop a strong public health system to improve our ability to respond to public health emergencies. We will improve the medical service system in which public medical institutions play a major role; support provinces with weak medical resources to build regional medical centers; and improve the capacity of community-level medical services with a focus on county-level hospitals. We will improve the quality and scale of medical personnel training and increase the number of certificated (assistant) doctors to 3.2 per 1,000 people and registered nurses to 3.8 per 1,000 people. We will improve the medical insurance system for the entire population, advance overall planning of basic medical insurance schemes at the provincial level, improve medical insurance and assistance systems for major diseases, ensure that medical expenses can be settled where they are incurred via basic medical insurance accounts, and actively advance the reform of centralized procurement and uses of medicine and consumables to reduce the burden of medical care for the public.
In terms of social security, the main aims are to help those most in need, to build a tightly woven safety net, and to build the necessary institutions. China has built the largest social security system in the world. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, we will further improve the multi-tiered social security system, increase the basic old-age insurance coverage to 95%, realize the unified national management of old-age insurance funds, promote the provincial-level unified management of insurances for unemployment and work-related injuries, relax insurance eligibility for people with flexible employment, and ensure the full coverage of social insurance for all eligible population. We will gradually improve the basic pension standards for urban and rural residents, and promote the transfer and continuation of social insurance. At the same time, we will strengthen social assistance, ensure the basic needs of people in difficulties, and promote the development of charity.
In terms of senior and child care, we will mainly improve the service system for the elderly and the young. It is expected that China will enter the stage of a moderately aging society during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. The draft outline responds to social concerns by actively responding to population aging as a national strategy. We will vigorously develop public-interest services for elderly care, and build an elderly care service system with the coordination of services based on community and home, while promoting the integration of medical care and health care. We will improve elderly care service network based on community and home, promote the transformation of public facilities suitable for elderly people, take various measures to expand the supply of beds in elderly care institutions, and improve the service capacity and level. The proportion of nursing beds will be increased to 55%. We will develop an inclusive child care service system and boost the number of nurseries for children under 3 years old from 1.8 to 4.5 per 1,000 people. We will support businesses, public institutions, social organizations and other social forces to provide public-interest child care services, encourage kindergartens to develop integrated services, and improve the quality and level of child care and education. Thank you.
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