Full text of Hu Jintao's report at 18th Party Congress (8)

VII. Strengthening Social Development by Improving the People's Wellbeing and Making Innovations in Management

Strengthening social development is an important guarantee for maintaining social harmony and stability. We must intensify our efforts to improve the basic public service system, strengthen and make innovations in social management, and boost the building of a harmonious socialist society in order to uphold the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people.

In strengthening social development, we must give high priority to ensuring and improving the people's wellbeing. To improve people's material and cultural lives is the fundamental purpose of reform and opening up and socialist modernization. We should bring as much benefit as possible to the people, resolve as many difficulties as possible for them, and solve the most pressing and real problems of the greatest concern to them. We should keep making progress in ensuring that all the people enjoy their rights to education, employment, medical and old-age care, and housing so that they will lead a better life.

To strengthen social development, we must accelerate social structural reform. With the aim of establishing a socialist system of social management with Chinese characteristics, we should quicken the pace of building the following mechanisms and systems: a law-based social management system featuring Party committee leadership, government execution, nongovernmental support and public participation; a basic public service system that is government-led and sustainable and covers both urban and rural areas; a system of modern social organizations in which functions of the government are separated from those of social organizations, rights and responsibilities are clearly established, and social organizations exercise autonomy in accordance with the law; and a social management mechanism that resolves public complaints at the source, exercises dynamic administration, and responds to emergencies.

1. Work hard to run education to the satisfaction of the people

Education is the cornerstone of national renewal and social progress. We must give high priority to developing education, implement the Party's education policy to the letter, ensure that education serves socialist modernization and the people, take fostering integrity and promoting rounded development of people as the fundamental task of education, and train participants of and successors to the socialist cause who develop morally, intellectually, physically and aesthetically. We should provide well-rounded education for all students, deepen overall education reform, focus on improving the quality of education, and cultivate in students a sense of social responsibility, a spirit of innovation and the ability to acquire practical skills. We should develop preschool education, promote balanced development of nine-year compulsory education, make senior secondary education basically universal, accelerate development of modern vocational education, and bring out the full potential for development of higher education. We should actively develop continuing education, improve the system of lifelong education, and build a learning society. We should vigorously promote fairness in education, and ensure balanced allocation of educational resources with a focus on rural, remote, poor and ethnic minority areas. We should support special education, increase subsidies to students from poor families, and ensure that children of rural migrant workers in cities have equal access to education. All this is designed to help all children gain required knowledge and skills. We should encourage and guide nongovernmental entities to run educational programs. We should strengthen the ranks of teachers, and enhance their work ethics and professional competence as well as their sense of honor and responsibility as teachers.

2. Deliver a better job in creating employment

Employment is crucial to the people's wellbeing. We must implement the principle of promoting self-reliant employment, market-regulated employment and government-backed employment and entrepreneurship, the strategy of giving top priority to employment and a proactive employment policy. We should ensure that people have realistic expectations about employment, encourage creating employment through multiple channels and forms, and expand job opportunities by creating new businesses. We should increase job opportunities for young people, especially university graduates, the rural migrant labor force, urban residents who have difficulty finding jobs, and ex-servicepersons. We should strengthen vocational skill training; improve people's ability to find jobs and start up their own businesses; and enhance employment stability. We should improve the human resources market and employment services, and make unemployment insurance play a bigger role in promoting employment. We should improve the system of labor standards and the mechanism for harmonizing labor relations, strengthen supervision of labor protection and labor dispute mediation and arbitration, and build harmonious labor relations.

3. Make every effort to increase individual income

To ensure that the people share in the fruits of development, we must deepen reform of the income distribution system, and increase individual income in step with economic development and work remuneration in step with improvement in labor productivity, and we should raise the share of individual income in the distribution of national income and increase the share of work remuneration in primary distribution. A proper balance should be struck between efficiency and fairness in both primary and secondary distribution, with particular emphasis on fairness in secondary distribution. We should improve the primary distribution system to allow factors of production such as labor, capital, technology and managerial expertise to have their due share of income according to their respective contribution; and we should take speedy steps to improve the mechanism of secondary distribution regulating income distribution mainly through taxation, social security, and transfer payments. We should deepen reform of the wage and salary system in enterprises, government bodies and public institutions, promote collective bargaining on wages in enterprises, and protect income earned through work. We should increase proprietary individual income through multiple channels. We should improve the way in which income is distributed, protect lawful income, increase the income of low-income groups, adjust excessively high income, and prohibit illicit income.

4. Promote coordinated development of the social security system in urban and rural areas

Social security is a basic system for ensuring people's livelihood and adjusting social distribution. We should institute a complete, multi-tiered and sustainable system for providing basic social security for both the urban and rural population, with emphasis on making the system more equitable and sustainable and ensuring the smooth transfer of social security accounts between localities. We should reform and improve the social insurance system for enterprises as well as government bodies and public institutions, integrate the basic old-age insurance and basic medical insurance systems for non-working urban residents and the rural population, provide sufficient funding for personal accounts for old-age insurance in a phased way, place basic pensions under unified national planning, and establish mechanisms for setting standards on social security benefits and regularly adjusting them that give due consideration to the interests of people from all walks of life. We should widen channels for raising money for social security funds, introduce a system to manage investment operations of social insurance funds, and ensure that these funds are safe and appreciate over time. We should improve the social assistance system and the social welfare system, support the development of charities, and ensure preferential treatment to entitled groups. We should put in place a housing system that combines market supply and government support, strengthen construction and management of low-income housing, and better meet poor families' basic housing needs. We should adhere to the basic state policy of gender equality and protect the legitimate rights and interests of women and children. We should actively address population aging and vigorously develop old-age services. We should improve the social security and service systems for the disabled and effectively protect their rights and interests. We should improve the mechanism for supervising the work of social security agencies and make social security services more convenient and efficient.

5. Improve people's health

Good health is a prerequisite for promoting well-rounded development of the person. Keeping to the goal of improving people's health, we should put disease prevention first, make rural areas the focus of our work, support both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, establish a sound mechanism for basic medical and health care and strengthen such endeavor at the community level. We should give high priority to carrying out overall reform in medical insurance, medical treatment, public health, drug supply, and the mechanism of monitoring and supervision, and we should improve the policy for enhancing people's health and provide them with safe, effective, convenient and affordable public health services and basic medical care. We should improve the medical insurance system that covers the whole population, establish a mechanism to provide insurance and aid in treating major and very serious diseases, and improve mechanisms for handling public health emergencies and for preventing and controlling major diseases. We should consolidate the system for using basic drugs. We should improve the rural medical and health service network at county, township and village levels and the system of urban community health services, deepen reform of public hospitals, and encourage the development of private hospitals. We should support the development of traditional Chinese medicine and the traditional medicine of ethnic minorities. We should ensure that medical personnel provide better services and improve their work ethics. We should reform and improve institutions and mechanisms for managing and supervising food and drug safety. We should launch patriotic sanitation campaigns and ensure that people have good health and a sense of contentment. We must adhere to the basic state policy of family planning, improve the health of newborns, steadily improve the population policy and promote long-term and balanced population growth.

6. Strengthen and make innovations in social management

To conduct social management in a more scientific way, we must improve the laws, institutions and mechanisms concerning and capacity for social management, and train more personnel and promote IT application in this field. We should improve the way in which the government provides public services, strengthen the system of social management and services at the community level, and ensure that urban and rural communities provide better services. Enterprises, public institutions and people's organizations should play a better role in conducting social management and providing related services. We should guide social organizations to develop in a healthy and orderly way and fully leverage the fundamental role of the people in social management. We should improve and make innovations in the management relating to and services for the floating population and special groups. We should correctly handle problems among the people, and put in place a sound mechanism in which the Party and the government play the leading role in upholding the rights and interests of the people. We should improve the system for handling people's complaints expressed in letters or visits, and improve the integrated system of mediation by the people, administrative mediation and judicial mediation. We should maintain regular and open channels for the people to voice their demands, for coordinating their interests and for protecting their rights and interests. We should establish a sound mechanism for assessing potential risks major policy decisions may pose to social stability. We should improve the public safety system and the workplace safety environment in enterprises to curb major and very serious accidents. We should strengthen and improve the Party's leadership over the work of judicial, procuratorial, and public security organs, and strengthen their ranks, so that they can fulfill their duties in carrying forward and protecting the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We should intensify efforts to ensure law and order, improve the multi-dimensional system for crime prevention and control, strengthen the infrastructure of judicial bodies, and prevent and punish criminal and illegal activities in accordance with the law to protect the people's lives and property. We should improve the national security strategy and its work mechanism, and keep high vigilance against and resolutely forestall separatist activities and activities of infiltration and subversion carried out by hostile forces, so as to ensure national security.

As long as the whole Party and all the people make concerted efforts, we can foster a dynamic environment in which everyone contributes to social harmony and benefits from a harmonious society.