China's 900 million farmers have benefited in the past five years from a package of policies supporting agriculture and giving favorable treatment to farmers, including rescindment of agricultural tax, direct subsidies to grain farmers and exemption from all tuition and miscellaneous fees for rural compulsory education students. Chinese farmers have had their burdens lightened, coupled with increasing income and the ability to spend more.

The favorable policies also cover China's urban residents, who have significantly elevated their living standard and raised income under the guideline of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, put forward by the 16th National Congress of Communist Party of China (CPC).

As is shown by the new statistics on China's economic and social development from the National Development and Reform Commission, China has fully implemented the Scientific Outlook on Development and endeavored to establish a harmonious socialist society after the 16th National Congress of the CPC, and taken on a brand new economic and social look. The Chinese economy has been growing at a fast and steady pace driven by sharply increasing incomes and rising consumption in both urban and rural areas. Public finance in the country has paid much heed to the welfare of the population and the social insurance system covering millions of urban and rural residents has been basically formed.

As a goal raised by the 16th National Congress of the CPC in 2002, China aims to concentrate its efforts on the construction of a well-off society benefiting all in the first two decades of this century. Its practice over the past five years has evidenced the phenomenal achievements of the country.

During the period from 2003 to 2006, China maintained an annual economic growth rate of 10.4 percent, far exceeding that of the world average standing at 4.8 percent, and witnessed one of the fastest growing periods since the foundation of the People's Republic of China. During this period, reported the National Development and Reform Commission. China's GDP topped 21.09 trillion yuan in 2006, nearly 1.5 times that of 2002 in terms of comparable price.

China has also accomplished great advances in upgrading and optimizing the economic structure initiated by the 16th National Congress of the CPC. The conditions of infrastructure such as transportation, telecommunications and energy supply have been markedly improved. Agriculture has been further consolidated and industrial restructuring expedited, the high-tech industry, in particular, won historic progress. China's added value of high-tech industry hit 964.9 billion yuan in 2006, an increase of 1.56 times that of 2002, pushing it up to the third place in the world. With growing pulling power, the high-tech industry has become a new growth point of the national economy. The widespread application and penetration of high technologies like information and biology has accelerated the upgrading of traditional industries and has brought changes to the mode of social life and production.

The Central Government of China has attached more importance to the regional coordinated development and further outlined the general strategy of regional development. A comprehensive regional development pattern of China is taking shape, featuring great development of the western region, rejuvenation of northeast China, development of the central region and the leading role in development of the eastern region.

Breakthroughs have also been achieved in the reform of some key areas and crucial links in China since 2003. The exemption of tax on agricultural specialty products, livestock tax, agricultural tax and slaughter tax have relieved farmers of an annual load of 125 billion yuan. The reform of land occupation and acquisition system of China has begun and the pilot reform of rural land circulation is moving forward smoothly.

The 16th National Congress of the CPC proposed to maintain and optimize the basic economic system and deepen the reform of management of state-owned assets. In the past five years, China's framework on establishing the state-owned assets supervision and management system has been put into place. Improvements have been made in shareholding reform. The structure of the majority of commodity and service prices being subject to market were further consolidated. China's investment management system has been positively promoted, and the reform of finance and tax systems deepened. Breakthroughs have been achieved in introducing a shareholding system in state-owned commercial banks. Significant progress has been made in the mechanism for setting exchange rates and the market-oriented reform of interest rates. Reform in the capital market was steadily improved, and the institutional environment of the non-public sector of the economy has been further improved. In the last 5 years, China actively fulfilled its WTO accession commitments by giving liberation to the management rights for foreign trade and lowering the tariff by a big margin. The total volume of foreign trade increased from $620.7 billion to $1,760.6 billion in last year with an average annual rate of 29.8 percent, rising to the third place from the fifth on the world's list. The total amount of foreign capital reached $257.5 billion. China has attracted the most foreign direct investment among all developing countries for 14 years in a row.

At the same time, the income of urban and rural residents was further increased and their consumption advanced. Last year, rural per-capita net income reached 3,587 yuan, increased by 44.9 percent over 2002. In the first half of this year, rural per-capita cash income reached 2,111 yuan, an increase of 13.3 percent after adjusting for inflation. Urban per-capita disposable income reached 11,759.5 yuan, an increase of 52.7 percent over 2002; in the first half of 2007, this number reached 7,052 yuan, an increase of 14.2 percent after adjusting for inflation.

In the first half of this year, consumption continuously trended upwards. Total retail sales of consumer products increased 15.4 percent over the same period of last year, the highest rate since 1997. Consumption obviously accelerated, and living standards improved.

The social security coverage of urban workers has been gradually widened. Since 2003, the average annual number of people participating in basic old-age insurance has increased by 10.86 million, basic medical insurance, by 16.10 million, unemployment insurance, by 2.717 million, workers' compensation insurance, by nearly 18.97 million, maternity insurance by 9.35 million, and these figures show a tendency of increasing year by year. Urban subsistence allowances basically achieved the goal of insuring basic needs, and the system of subsistence allowances for rural residents has already been popularized all over the country.

The coverage rate of compulsory education in China increased from 91.2 percent in 2002 to 96 percent of last year. Medical and health care systems have been gradually improved. Disease prevention and control systems were completely established. Life expectancy reached 72.95 years old, two years more than that of 2002.

In the process of building a prosperous society in all respects, people in all industries across the country have fully implemented a scientific outlook on development, endeavored to build a harmonious socialist society, unswervingly reduced energy consumption, cut the discharge of pollutants as set out in the 11th Five-Year Plan, and strengthened environmental protection and ecological improvement. Last year, the proportion of energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP decreased by 1.33 percent. It was the first decrease since 2003, and saved energy equaling 3 million tons of standard coal. The proportion of sewage disposal in urban areas reached 56 percent last year, an increase of 16 percent over 2002. The proportion of household refuse safely disposed of in urban areas reached 54 percent, an increase of 4 percent over 2002.