Jiang on Economic Restructuring, Poverty Relief

President Jiang Zemin called for speeding up economic restructuring amid economic development and promoting economic development amid economic restructuring.

The president, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remark at a group discussion of Shanxi deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC), in session here since Sunday.

Jiang emphasized the following in economic restructuring:

-- To strengthen agriculture by building more agriculture- related infrastructure facilities and protecting farmland;

-- To readjust the industrial structure and the industrial product mix; to stop making unsalable products and close factories that are outdated and cause pollution;

-- To push for the allying, merging and regrouping of enterprises for economies of scale;

-- To upgrade traditional industries and restructure old industrial bases;

-- To speed up the development of hi-tech industries;

-- To exert greater efforts to develop the tertiary industry, especially information, banking, tourism and services; and

-- To promote a rational distribution and coordinated development of regional economies, and rural and urban economies.

To do a better job of economic restructuring, Jiang emphasized the following: to work out well-coordinated good plans; to bring into play the regulatory functions of the market; to attach importance to the role of science and technology; to combine estructuring of the state-owned economic sector with an upgrading of industries and a readjustment of the ownership structure; and to help workers affected by economic restructuring overcome difficulties.

Jiang talked about the strategy of developing the country's west in a big way and about poverty relief at a group discussion attended by Guizhou deputies to the NPC.

The completion of the poverty-relief program will not mean an end to efforts to eliminate poverty but represent the start of a new period, Jiang said. During the 10th Five-Year Plan period 2001-2005) and in an even longer period, China will continue to implement a vigorous poverty-relief campaign, he said.

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