In 2003, it was amid the public health crisis of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) that the central government first raised the principle of "people first".

People should be the purpose of all development. That is why more resources (though they never seem enough) are being committed to such mass social security programs as rural medical care and schools, aid for the low-income and jobless, and environmental protection and emission control.

Laws are being enacted and amended to better protect citizens' economic rights, the recent one on farmers' land-use rights and their autonomous cooperatives, for example.

Much of the 4 trillion yuan stimulus package that Beijing has designed to cope with the global financial crisis features no more costly and energy-consuming projects. Most of them, as public infrastructure projects, have a very clear emphasis on the development of quality of life in urban and rural settings.

(China Daily December 18, 2008)