Parliament endorses cabinet reshuffle, unleashing China's reform vitality (3)

STEADY, NOT HASTY

By staging gradual reform, China has seen its per capita gross domestic product rocket from a few hundred U.S. dollars in the late 1970s to 6,100 U.S. dollars last year.

It is now the world's second-largest economy, as well as the top exporter and top foreign reserve holder.

Beneath such economic glories, however, lie social ills such as environmental woes, food safety, corruption and an urban-rural gap in public services.

"These challenges can not be tackled through reform overnight," said Zhou Wenbin, an NPC deputy and president of Nanchang University in Jiangxi Province.

"We must be prepared to advance reforms as if we were fighting a protracted battle and seek to make breakthroughs in key areas when the time is ripe," he said.

To keep the country's reforms on a healthy trajectory that can ensure both social stability and steady economic expansion, China's top legislature has vowed to provide solid legislative support.

Lang Sheng, deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee, said the NPC Standing Committee will prioritize its legislative work in the next five years according to the Party's reform agenda.

NPC deputy Zhang Dinglong, also an official with the Research Office of the State Council, said China's current reform target is to build an efficient and law-based government that can better safeguard social justice and fairness and unite all Chinese people in the goal of achieving national rejuvenation.

Given that the Chinese economy has become integrated with the world economy in an unprecedented way, the changing external environment shall weigh more on the country's reform decisions now than ever.

Without a worldwide perspective, for instance, researchers can hardly make globally competitive technical innovations to facilitate domestic economic restructuring or sharpen China's cutting edge in foreign trade.

At the legislative session, Chinese officials showed interest in borrowing foreign experiences to push ahead reforms.

Central banker Zhou Xiaochuan, for example, did not rule out the possibility of applying overseas financial instruments such as asset securitization and municipal bonds in addition to bank loans to finance China's urbanization drive.

But he also stressed that rules must be tweaked in line with domestic circumstances before a financial instrument is put to use.

Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong, also an NPC deputy, said that with reforms being advanced in broader areas, wisdom matters more than ever.

First-rate reform must be based on thorough planning with minimized negative impacts, he said.

China has also shown its reformist spirit in diplomacy.

At a press conference on the sidelines of the parliamentary session, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi called on the G20 summit to promote the reform of the international financial system, improve the multilateral trading system and boost growth and employment.

"China is an active participant...and willing to play a proper role to facilitate the building of a fair and rational international system," he said.

(Xinhua writers Zhang Zhanpeng, Shen Yang, Luo Zhengguang, Ma Yang and Li Zhihui contributed to reporting)