■We will advance new urbanization.

Urbanization is the path we need to take to develop a modern China. It is where we will find the greatest potential for domestic demand and the most powerful force for sustaining economic development. This year, we will take the following three major steps regarding urbanization.

First, we will move faster to see that urban residency is granted to more people with rural household registration living in urban areas.

We will deepen reform of the household registration system and relax restrictions on eligibility for urban residency. We will introduce policies for making both the transfer payments and the land designated for urban development granted to the government of a local jurisdiction conditional upon the number of people with rural household registration who are granted permanent urban residency in that jurisdiction. The full range of trials for developing new urbanization will be extended to more areas. Residence cards are important assets for their holders. We must move faster to ensure that permanent urban residents without urban residency are issued residence cards, thus enabling them to enjoy, as provided for by law,the right to access compulsory education, employment, medical care, and other basic public services. We will promote the development of small towns and small and medium-sized cities in the central and western regions to help more rural migrant workers find employment or start businesses in urban areas closer to home so that they do not have to choose between earning money and taking care of the families they leave behind.

Second, we will promote the construction of government-subsidized housing in urban areas and the healthy development of the real estate market.

This year, we will see to it that six million housing units are rebuilt in rundown urban areas and that more people displaced by the rebuilding of such areas receive monetary housing compensation rather than housing. Taking into consideration people’s demand for buying homes or improving theirhousing situation, we will improve the tax and credit policies to support justified personal housing consumption and adopt different policies in different cities as appropriate to their local conditions, in order to cut housing inventory and promote stability in the real estate market. We will put in place a housing system which encourages both renting and purchasing and, over time, enable eligible non-registered urban residents to apply for public rental housing.

Third, we will redouble our efforts to improve urban planning, development, and management.

We will make urban planning more sound, forward-looking, authoritative, and transparent and encourage local governments to integrate their various types of urban plans into a single master plan. Construction will begin on at least 2,000 kilometers of utility tunnels. We will actively promote environmentally friendly buildings and construction materials, make a big push to develop steel understructures and prefabricated modules, accelerate work to ensure adherence to construction standards, and see that the level of technique in building and the quality of construction projects are improved. We will encourage institutional innovation in urban management, work hard to create smart cities,improve public transport networks, address traffic congestion and other prominent problems, and improve living environments so that people can enjoy a more secure, relaxing, and satisfying city life.

■ We will work to improve the layout of development across regions.

We will push ahead with the Belt and Road Initiative, carry out the development plan for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration initiative, and speed up the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt. We will draw up and implement the 13th five-year plan for the large-scale development of the western region, implement a new round of strategies for revitalizing the old industrial bases in the Northeast and other parts of the country, adopt the new ten-year plan for fuelling the rise of the central region, and support the eastern region as it leads the country in making breakthroughs in institutional innovation and coordinated land and maritime development. We will promote the economic transformation and upgrading of resource-dependent regions. We will support the development of old revolutionary base areas, areas with concentrations of ethnic minorities, border areas, and poor areas. We will work out and implement a national maritime strategy, safeguard national maritime rights and interests, protect marine ecosystems and habitats, and open up more space for the blue economy so as to strengthen China’s maritime development.