In an exclusive interview with China.org.cn, deputy Zheng
Gongcheng, who is attending the First Session of the 10th National
People's Congress, the top legislative body in China, said that the
government should speed up the strengthening of the social security
system in order to solve the capital shortage for the under
privileged.
Zheng Gongcheng, a deputy from the Heilongjiang Delegation and
professor of Renmin University of China, has been doing research on
social security since 1985 and is therefore very familiar with the
development of China's social security system.
In
the past 17 years, Zheng has witnessed "remarkable" achievements in
the field. "Especially, the reform of social security system
achieved through Zhu Rongji's administration in the past five
years," he told China.org.cn.
Zheng said that China had primarily established a social security
framework including endowment insurance, unemployment insurance,
medi-care and social welfare. "About 140 million Chinese now have
endowment insurance, 80 billion Chinese buy medi-care, and over 100
billion have unemployment insurance," he said.
As
for social welfare, the Compulsory Education Law ensures that more
children continue their studies, accordingly improving their
educational level. In rural areas, the number of poor has
continuously dropped through large-scale poverty-relieving
projects. In the cities, the minimum living standard has secured
the basic lives of more than 27 million people made redundant from
State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
"Social security has been the top concern of the Chinese in recent
years, but surveys show that 75 percent of Chinese feel satisfied
with the reform," he said.
However, Zheng also warned that it was still a hard task to
accomplish an overall social security system for such a huge
country like China, in the short term, considering the huge
difference between east and west regions; rural and urban.
He
hoped that China can set up a system that can make every needy
person able to get help from government in time, no matter where he
or she is from; developed areas or backward areas; rural or
cities.
"It's time that government should speed up the improvement of
social security systems instead of exploring efficient measures
slowly." He urged that government do so immediately to solve
problems such as outstanding payments and capital shortage of
enterprises.
Currently, enterprises are responsible to hand in funds for an
employee, which has greatly added to their burdens. Therefore,
Zheng urged the government to explore more channels to raise social
security funds.
Zheng planned to submit several bills concerning social security to
the First Session of the 10th National People's Congress, the top
legislative body in China. One of them is that the government
should raise more funds for social security system through selling
state assets.
"These senior employees in state-owned enterprises have contributed
to China's total state assets of over 10 trillion yuan -- so they
should get rewards," Zheng explained.
The incremental fiscal revenue in both central and local government
should also contribute to social security construction, he
suggested.
(China.org.cn by Staff Reporter Tang Fuchun, March 12, 2003)