CCTV:

We noticed that sustained progress had been made regarding employment and social security over the past 10 years, and people's well-being has been significantly enhanced. Can you share with us your thoughts on the years of endeavor? Moreover, is there any experience or practice that should continue for a long time? Thank you.

Li Zhong: 

Thank you for your question. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to guaranteeing and improving people's well-being and put forward a series of new thoughts, new views, and new judgments, charting the course and providing fundamental guidance for enhancing people's well-being in the new era. We have studied thoroughly and unswervingly put them into practice. The regularities and practices we will continue to observe and develop are as follows: 

First, we will continue upholding the Party's overall leadership, the fundamental political guarantee for our work. Taking a holistic approach to promoting the cause of the Party and the country, our Party has strengthened its organizational leadership and pooled strengths from various fronts to implement the employment-first strategy, all in a bid to make social security fairer and more sustainable. While coping with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and China-U.S. economic and trade frictions in recent years, the Party has made stabilizing and ensuring employment a top priority in our efforts to ensure stability on six key fronts and security in six key areas and successfully sustained overall stable employment. All facts demonstrate that only through strengthening the Party's overall leadership and resolutely implementing the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee can concrete steps be taken to improve people's well-being. 

Second, we will continue taking the people-centered approach, which is both the principle and purpose of our work. Employment and social security work involve the most pressing, most immediate issues that concern the people. Our Party remains committed to the belief that development is for the people, and the people should pursue it and share its fruits. Our efforts to stabilize and expand employment and improve the social security system have laid a solid foundation for the people's pursuit of a better life. It fully demonstrates that only through observing the people-centered development philosophy, considering the people's feelings, and ensuring the people are universally benefited can the people's actual demands be better responded to and their sense of gain, happiness, and security be further enhanced. 

Third, we will continue doing everything within our capacity, which is an important principle for doing a good job. Fully demonstrating the spirit of seeking truth from facts and proceeding from reality is a principle based on a thorough understanding of our country's prevailing reality and development phase. Our Party, committed to safeguarding and improving people's well-being through development, has set development as the foundation and prerequisite for solving employment problems. We will not do anything beyond the current development phase or our financial strength. Instead, we will gradually improve social security as the economy develops. Only through proceeding from national realities, observing regularities, doing everything within our capacity and paying attention to stability, consistency, and accumulation, can the work of employment and social security develop steadily long into the future.

Fourth, we will continue following the guidelines for the work related to people's well-being, that is, to meet people's basic needs, prioritize key areas, improve institutions, and guide public expectations. Composed with an integrated mechanism, the four aspects complement and mutually reinforce each other. Prioritizing meeting people's basic needs, our Party has made concerted efforts to ensure that public services are inclusive, essential needs are met, and guaranteed basic living standards for people in difficulty. More attention will be given to key groups, prominent problems, and critical links to improve employment and social security through making major breakthroughs. We will continue to uphold institutional guidance, advance reform and innovation with the times, and make our institutions more mature and stable. Balancing between ideals and realities, needs and possibilities, as well as immediate gains and long-term interests, we will try to create an environment that encourages a public expectation that advocates hard work in pursuing a better life. 

Both in the immediate future and for some time to come, the pressure on aggregate job creation and related structural issues will continue unabated. Social security coverage still needs to be expanded, and it remains a long-term major strategic task to realize fuller, higher-quality employment and improve the tiered social security system. We will continue to follow the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, deepen our understanding of the regularities governing employment and social security, and carry forward our experience and effective practices to promote the sound and sustained development of employment and social security. Thank you.

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