XII. Promoting Reform and Innovation of Social Undertakings

In order to make sure that more fruits of development are shared by all the people in a fair way, we must accelerate the reform of social undertakings, satisfactorily resolve the most pressing and real problems of the greatest concern to the people, endeavor to provide the public with diversified services, and better satisfy the people's demands.

42. Deepening the comprehensive reforms in the area of education. We will carry out the Party's principles on education, continue to cultivate talented people with high moral standards, strengthen education in core socialist values and improve education in outstanding traditional Chinese culture, create effective forms and lasting mechanisms for the campaign of “enjoying study and labor and loving the country,” and enhance students' sense of social responsibility, innovativeness and practical abilities. We will intensify physical education and extracurricular activities to promote young people's mental and physical health. We will improve aesthetics education to raise students' aesthetic and artistic ability. We will vigorously promote educational equality, improve the financial assistance system for students from families with financial difficulties, and establish an effective mechanism to expand the coverage of high-quality education resources by means of information technology, so as to gradually narrow the gaps between different regions, between urban and rural areas and between different schools. We will make a balanced allocation of compulsory education resources between urban and rural areas, set unified standards for the construction of public schools, exchange principals and teachers among different public schools, and abolish the practice of establishing key schools or classes, so as to overcome the problem caused by choosing schools and reduce the academic burden on students. We will quicken steps in the development of a modern vocational education system, deepen the integration of production and education and cooperation between schools and enterprises, and train high-caliber workers and technical talents. We will make innovations in the mechanism of higher learning institutions that trains talents, encouraging them to strive for specialty and excellence. We will boost the reform and development of pre-school, special and continued education. In order to eradicate the drawback of “one's fate being determined by an examination,” we will promote the reform of the examination and college admission system, explore an operational mechanism in which college admission and examination are separated to a certain extent, students have multiple opportunities in the college entrance examinations, colleges admit students independently according to law, professional institutions organize for the implementation, the government enforces macro control, and the society participates in the supervision. We will try to implement a school district system in which students enter the schools within their respective districts throughout their nine-year compulsory education without taking any examinations. We will promote academic proficiency tests and comprehensive quality evaluation in junior and senior high schools. We will intensify efforts to administer categorized tests and open admissions for vocational school entrance. We will gradually establish a comprehensive evaluation and diversified college admission mechanism based on the results in the unified national entrance examinations for regular institutions of higher learning and the proficiency test results in high schools. We will explore ways to reduce the number of courses in the unified national examinations, with a mixture of social and natural sciences, and have open-to-all foreign languages tests several times a year. We will try to unify credits among regular higher-learning institutions, higher vocational schools and adult colleges, thus broadening the channels for lifelong learning. We will further push ahead with the separation of government administration, school management and educational evaluation, delegate greater power to provincial governments in making their overall educational development plans and to schools to make their own decisions about school affairs, and improve the internal governance structure of the schools. We will strengthen the state's function in supervising education, and entrust social organizations to carry out evaluation and monitoring of education. We will improve the systems of government subsidies, government services purchase, student loans, scholarships and incentive for donation to education, and encourage social funds to be channeled into education.

43. Improving systems and mechanisms that boost employment and business startups. We will set up a mechanism that links up economic growth and employment increase, and improve the responsibility system of the government in promoting employment. We will regulate human resource management, removing all institutional barriers and employment discrimination that affect equal employment, such as the birthplace of a person (cities or countryside), industries, social status and gender. We will improve preferential policies for business startups, so as to put into place a new mechanism under which the government gives incentive to, the enterprises support and the laborers are bold in starting new businesses. We will improve the public service system for employment that fares both urban and rural areas equally, and build a lifelong vocational training system for workers. We will strengthen the functions of the unemployment insurance system in preventing unemployment and boosting employment, and improve the employment/unemployment monitoring and statistics system. We will innovate the labor relations coordination mechanism, opening up channels for workers to effectively make reasonable appeals. We will promote the employment of young people, especially college graduates, and the employment of workers from rural areas, urban residents with financial difficulties and ex-service members. We will create more employment opportunities for college graduates during the process of industrial upgrading. The posts in public management and social services that the government buys shall be primarily used for the employment of graduates of higher-learning institutions. We will improve the service and security mechanism for encouraging college graduates to work at the community level, and increase the proportion of the posts in which they enjoy priority in the recruitment of civil servants and public institution employees. We will adopt policies to encourage more college graduates to start businesses on their own, and integrate and develop the entrepreneurship and employment foundations for graduates of national- and provincial-level colleges. We will implement a plan for promoting the employment of college graduates who have left school but have not found jobs, include unemployed college graduates in employment-preparation activities, such as working as interns and skill training, and provide overall employment assistance to those with special difficulties.

44. Forming a reasonable and orderly distribution pattern of income. We will place emphasis on protecting labor income, strive to synchronize the increase of remuneration for labor with the growth of labor productivity, and raise the proportion of labor remuneration in primary distribution. We will improve the mechanisms of wage determination and regular growth, the systems of minimum wage and guaranteed full payment of wages, and the system of collective pay negotiation in enterprises. We will reform the salary, allowance and bonus system of government organs and public institutions, improve the growth mechanism of allowances for working in remote and border areas. We will improve the system in which the returns for capital, knowledge, technology, managerial expertise and other production factors are determined by the market. We will open up channels for investment and lease services, optimize the mechanism of return for investors of listed companies, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of the investors, particularly the medium and small investors, so as to increase the citizens' property incomes via various channels.

We will improve the regulatory mechanism of income redistribution mainly by the means of taxation, social security and transfer payment and enhance the regulatory role of taxation. We will set up a reasonable sharing mechanism of the earnings from transfer of public resources. We will improve the tax reduction and exemption system for charitable donations, so as to give full play to the positive role of charity organizations in helping the poor and needy. We will regulate income distribution procedures and improve the regulatory systems and mechanisms and policy system for income distribution, establish an individual income and property information system, protect legitimate incomes, regulate excessively high incomes, redefine and clear away hidden incomes, outlaw illegal incomes, increase the incomes of low-income groups, and increase the proportion of the middle-income group in society as a whole. We will strive to narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas, different regions and different sectors, thus gradually forming an olive-shaped distribution structure in the country.

45. Instituting a fairer and more sustainable social security system. We will adhere to the basic old-age insurance system that combines social pools with individual accounts, improve the individual accounts system, complete the incentive mechanism in which those who contribute more will get more, guarantee the rights and interests of the insured, place basic old-age pension under unified national planning, and uphold the principle of balance based on actuarial mathematics. We will push forward the reform of the old-age insurance system for government organs and public institutions. We will integrate the basic old-age insurance and medical care insurance systems for urban and rural residents, and expedite the balanced development of the minimum living allowance system in both urban and rural areas. We will establish and improve a social security benefits calculation and regular adjustment mechanism that gives appropriate consideration to various groups. We will improve policies on the transfer and continuation of social insurance, extend insurance coverage to more groups of people, and reduce the social insurance premiums appropriately and in a timely manner. We will study and work out a policy to progressively raise the retirement age. We will speed up the improvement of a social security management system and service network. We will improve a housing security and supply system consistent with our national conditions, create an open and standard housing provident fund system, and improve the regulations on the withdrawal, use and supervision of the provident fund. We will improve a financial input system for and the budgeting system of social security. We will strengthen management of and supervision over investment of social insurance funds, and encourage the funds to be invested into diversified sectors in the market. We will enact preferential policies, such as tax exemption and deferral, and encourage the development of enterprise annuity, occupational annuity and commercial insurance, so as to bring into shape a multi-level social security system. We will respond actively to the aging of the population, quicken steps in the establishment of a social endowment service system and development of the service industry for the elderly. We will improve the caring service system for children, women and seniors left behind in the rural areas and a classified security system to protect the rights and interests of the disabled and children in difficulties.

46. Deepening reform in medicine and health care. We will proceed with a comprehensive reform in medical security, medical care, public health, and the medicine supply and regulatory system. We will deepen the comprehensive reform of grass-roots medical and healthcare institutions, and improve the network of urban and rural basic medical and healthcare services. We will accelerate the reform of public hospitals, ensure the government shoulders its responsibilities in this regard, and set up a scientific medical treatment assessment mechanism and a personnel training and salary system suited to the characteristics of this sector. We will improve the rational modes of graded diagnosis and treatment, establishing a service contract between community doctors and residents. We will make full use of information means to promote the downward flow of high-quality medical sources, and strengthen the regional integration of public medical service resources. We will abolish the practice of raising medicine prices to make up for the shortfall in hospital funds, rationalize the prices of medical services and medicines, and establish an appropriate compensation mechanism. We will reform the methods of insurance payouts, and extend the medical insurance system to all the people. We will speed up the completion of the medical insurance and medical assistance system against fatal and serious diseases. We will improve the policies and mechanisms for the development of traditional Chinese medicine. We will encourage private funds to flow to medical services, first supporting them to flow to not-for-profit medical institutions. We will allow private funds to invest directly in services that are short of resources or are to meet diverse demands, and to participate in the reform and restructuring of public hospitals in various forms. We will allow doctors to work for more than one hospital, and allow private medical institutions to be included in designated medical insurance institutions. While persisting in the basic national policy of family planning, we will initiate a policy that allows married couples to have two children if one of the parents is a single child, and gradually adjust and improve the birth policy to promote balanced population growth in the long run.