The Communist Party of China (CPC) is dedicated to serving the
people heart and soul and bringing benefits to the people, the
CPC's mouthpiece People's Daily said in a commentary on
Monday.
The commentary listed some major facts and figures about the
improvement in the people's living standards and welfare in the
past three decades.
-- In terms of personal income, the annual per capita disposable
income of urban residents went up from 343 yuan in 1978 to 11,759
yuan in 2006, and the annual per capita net income of rural people
rose from 134 yuan to 3,578 yuan during the same period.
-- The per capita housing area for urban residents rose from 3.6
square meters in 1978 to 21.3 square meters in 2005, and rural
residents saw their average housing area increase from 8.1 square
meters to 29.7 square meters.
-- At the end of 2005, 99.2 percent of urban households were
supplied with pipeline gas or liquefied gas, and 90.6 percent of
rural houses had sanitary facilities.
-- With the world's largest rural population, China's central
finance allocated 339.7 billion yuan in 2006 to address the
problems concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers, a rise of
42.2 billion yuan over that in 2005. Taxes on agriculture and
special farm produces were abolished across the country in
2006.
-- A community-based health service network have covered almost
all cities and counties. About 410 million farmers have joined the
new rural cooperative medical care system, under which the central
government, local government and farmer pay 10 yuan each to a fund
pool which helps ease rural residents' financial burdens in medical
treatment.
-- In the nine-year compulsory education, the central government
remitted 52 million students from under-developed western and
central regions their tuition fees and extras in 2006. A total of
37.3 million poor students were offered free textbooks and 7.8
million board students were subsidized with living allowances.
-- By June last year, more than 57 percent of Chinese people had
telephones or cellphones. About 41.5 percent of urban households
owned computers, and two percent of rural homes got access to
computers.
(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2007)