The central government spent around two-thirds of its budget on improving people's lives during the past five years.

The establishment of a social security network covering both urban and rural areas highlights China's efforts to improve people's livelihoods in the past five years.

A basic pension system, the world's largest such pension network, now covers the entire country.

Over 95 percent of China's 1.3 billion people enjoy the benefits of a basic medical insurance system formed in the past five years.

China launched affordable housing construction on an unprecedented scale over the past years. The country started construction on 30 million units of affordable homes and housing units renovated from shantytowns. Some 17 million units have been completed to date.

An executive meeting was convened to study how to help low-income families and orphans and allocate subsidies for them. In addition, the basic pension level for company retirees rose for nine consecutive years.

Issues regarding agriculture, rural areas and farmers remained among the government's priorities in the past five years.

The central government earmarked a total of 4.47 trillion yuan over the past five years for the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, representing an annual growth rate of 23 percent.

Pushing forward reforms in major areas has also been an important point in executive meetings since 2008.

The State Council has also concentrated on significant reform areas, including value added tax (VAT), the pricing mechanism of refined oil products and fuel tax.

The VAT reform reduced companies' tax burden by more than 120 billion yuan in 2009.

Other fields of reform have included determining taxation on natural resources, promoting private investment and the development of small enterprises, improving the income distribution system and streamlining the administrative approval process.

Over the past five years, the State Council has worked on improving the country's pharmaceutical and healthcare systems at least seven times.

Every year, the State Council also held a meeting on comprehensive arrangements for the reform of the country's economic structure.