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.
