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Premier Urges Accelerated Building of Social Security System
Premier Zhu Rongji has urged faster building of a unified, standard, and perfect national social security system, stressing that this is of great importance to deepening the reform, maintaining social stability, and achieving sustainable development in China.
China is capable and has sufficient conditions to accelerate the building of its social security system, he said.
The premier made the remarks last Friday at a forum held at the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing, headquarters of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the central government, on further improving the social security system.
Zhu addressed the forum after hearing reports on the issue by a number of State Council officials and local officials from Beijing and Hebei, Liaoning, and Shaanxi provinces, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In his speech, Zhu stressed the importance, necessity, and urgency of accelerating the improvement of the social security system. Securing basic rights and living conditions for the working people is the fundamental goal of the Party, he noted.
Zhu quoted President Jiang Zemin as saying in his important instruction on the Party role that the Party should always represent the fundamental interests of the people.
As China's reform has entered its crucial stage and the country is in a transitional period, China can not achieve social stability without creating a perfect social security system, he said.
The premier said that the social security system must be independent from all enterprises and institutional units, and compatible with the country's economic capacity.
Three most important social security systems should be set up first, he said. They are the basic pension system, the security system for factory layoffs and the jobless, and the security system for the basic living need of urban residents.
The key to further improving the social security system is having a stable and reliable fund-raising mechanism, he said. He disclosed that the government is planning to set up a national social security fund by liquidating some state properties, issuing special long-term bonds, and adopting other possible methods.
He stressed the importance of ensuring the timely and sufficient distribution of pensions and subsidies for the jobless, saying that delayed money must be paid within this year and no new delays will be tolerated.
The central government will give a proper sum of subsidiary funds to money-tight areas, he said.
Vice Premier Wu Bangguo also attended the meeting.
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