Chinese President Hu Jintao Thursday called for APEC members to join hands in deepening and broadening cooperation and step forward toward the goal of persisting peace and common prosperity for the benefit of the people of the Asia Pacific region and the world.

Hu announced that in order to advance cooperation on human resources within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) framework, China has decided to launch, together with other APEC member economies, "the APEC Skills Development Promotion Project."

Hu made the remark in his speech at the fifth APEC Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting opened here Thursday morning.

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Full text of Hu's?speech

In his speech at the opening ceremony, Hu said to ensure sustained global economic growth and effectively tackle the risks and challenges to that growth "all countries and regions must pull together to address the underlying structural issues in economic development."

 

Hu said to realize inclusive growth, all the APEC members need to study and work together on the major topics of resolving the social issues emerging from economic development and laying a solid social foundation for trade promotion, investment facilitation and long-term economic development.

Hu pointed out that the ultimate purpose of inclusive growth was to spread the benefits of economic globalization and economic development among all countries, regions and people and to realize balanced economic and social progress through sustainable development.

To this end, Hu said the member economies should develop their markets, transform their economic growth models, increase economic efficiency and create more wealth so their people can live a better life.

Hu said the member economies should pursue social equity and justice by ensuring everyone equal access to development opportunities and eradicating obstacles that keep their people from participating in or sharing the fruits of economic development.

Hu said the member economies should put people first by maintaining and improving people's livelihoods. He added that development is for the people, by the people and its fruits should be shared among the people.

Hu put forward four proposals under the theme of the meeting.

Firstly, he said member economies should give priority to human resources development.

"We should be committed to the concept that human resources are the number one resources in economic and social development," Hu said, urging member economies to speed up the formulation of strategies that give priority to human resources development.

He said people should focus on adjusting the structure of human resources, invest in development of human resources and boost the innovation power of various kinds of human resources.

Secondly, Hu said member economies should implement the strategy of full employment by making it a priority goal of economic and social development. He called for the member economies to implement the strategy of expanding employment, maximize employment and development opportunities for workers and ensure full employment for their people.

Thirdly, Hu said the member economies should improve the quality and competence of their workers by formulating a guiding system, training system, evaluation system and incentive system.

He said the member economies should offer proper guidance to their workers so the workers can improve their moral and educational background, raise their competence, obtain new knowledge skills and know-how and become high-quality workers who meet the needs of economic and social development in a new era.

Fourthly, Hu said the member economies should build a social security system that ensures sustainable development. He emphasized the need to build a social security system covering both rural and urban areas, increase social security input in government budget, expand the coverage of social insurance and raise the level of social security steadily.

The theme of the fifth APEC Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting is developing human resources, vigorously promoting employment and realizing inclusive growth. Human resources officials from the 21 APEC members and people from the APEC secretariat, APEC Business Advisory Council and Pacific Economic Cooperation Council are present at the meeting.

This meeting is designed to provide a platform for all participating members to explore ways to address the challenges of the international financial crisis and to realize inclusive growth.

Beijing hosting the meeting reflects China's commitment to contributing to capacity building of developing members of APEC.

President Hu made the proposal on hosting the 2010 APEC Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting in Beijing as he attended the APEC economic leaders summit in Lima, Peru in 2008. He reaffirmed the host at the following APEC economic leaders summit in Singapore in 2009 and invited all APEC members to participate.

Beijing has been playing an active and important role in multilateral cooperation on human resources development within the APEC framework over the past two decades. It hosted the APEC High Level Meeting on Human Capacity Building in 2001, on which the members formulated the Beijing Initiative on APEC Human Capacity Building.