Report on the Work of the Government (full text)
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-03-15 10:42

V. Vigorously Developing Social Undertakings and Building a Harmonious Society

We must adopt a scientific outlook on development and implement the strategy of reinvigorating our country through science, education and trained personnel and the strategy of sustainable development to accelerate the development of social undertakings. We will strive to solve outstanding problems vital to the immediate interests of the people, safeguard social stability and build a harmonious socialist society.

1. Energetically working to develop science and technology, education, culture, health and sports, and promoting spiritual civilization. We will accelerate reform and development of science and technology. We will promulgate a national program for medium- to long-term scientific and technological development this year. We will continue the work of establishing a national innovation system. We will strengthen basic research and research in strategic hi-tech fields and important technologies for non-profit application. We will continue work on a set of major science and technology projects and devote more effort to tackling problems in key technologies. We will move forward with the development of major science and technology infrastructure projects and key national bases for scientific research. We will deepen the reform of the science and technology system, and accelerate the establishment of a management system, an innovation mechanism and a modern system of research institutes that are compatible with our socialist market economy. Enterprises need to play a key role in technological innovation. We will strengthen cooperation among industries, universities and research institutes to promote application of scientific and technological advances in production. We will continue to attach equal importance to the social and natural sciences and further develop philosophy and the social sciences.

We will genuinely make education a strategic priority. Focusing on improving compulsory education in rural areas, we will improve the mechanism to ensure funding for education, with government investment as the mainstay. We will continue to implement the plan to make nine-year compulsory education basically universal and basically eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults in the western region. Starting this year, students from poor farmers' families receiving compulsory education in key counties included in the national plan for poverty alleviation through development will be provided with free textbooks and exempted from paying miscellaneous fees, and those staying on campus will receive living allowances. We will extend this policy throughout the country's rural areas by 2007 to ensure that all students from poor families can go to school and receive compulsory education. We will work hard to provide schooling to the children of migrant workers in cities. We will strive to improve the quality of higher education. Great efforts will be put into developing vocational education of all types. We will fully implement the Party's education policy by strengthening moral education and promoting competence-oriented education to ensure that students develop in an all-round way. We will accelerate reform and innovation in the course content and methods of instruction, reduce the study burden on students and speed up the development of modern distance education. We will continue to promote the sound development of privately run schools. We will rigorously standardize the enrollment and fee systems of all types of schools and tighten their financial management and oversight.

We will accelerate the reform and development of health care. This year we will complete development of the system for disease prevention and control and basically complete the medical system for handling public health emergencies. We need to truly focus our medical and health care work on rural areas, upgrading the health care infrastructure and raising the overall level of medical personnel there. We will continue the pilot project for a new system of cooperative medical and health care services in rural areas and explore ways to set up a medical assistance system. We will work harder to prevent and control serious infectious diseases, endemic diseases and occupational diseases. We will conscientiously implement measures related to AIDS prevention and the treatment and care of HIV carriers and AIDS patients to firmly stop the spread of AIDS. We will carry out experimental reforms of the urban medical service system. We will strengthen urban community health services and energetically develop traditional Chinese medicine. We will deepen the rectification and standardization of fees for medical services and prices for medicines to solve the problem of inadequate and overly expensive medical services.

We will continue research on the population development strategy, maintain the family planning policy, and keep the birthrate low to improve the quality of our population. We will expand the system for rewarding and supporting rural families that observe the family planning policy and extend the "have fewer children and prosper quicker" project for alleviating poverty on a trial basis in more areas. We will do our work related to the elderly well, and we will take an interest in and support programs to help the disabled.