III. Suggestions for the Work of the Government This Year

Based on an understanding of the work of the past ten years, especially of the past five years, I wish to make the following suggestions for the government's main work this year.

1. Accelerating the change of the growth model and promoting sustained and sound economic development

All the achievements we have made in China's socialist modernization are attributable to sustained and sound economic development, without which we would have accomplished nothing.

China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time. This basic national condition has not changed; nor has the principal problem in our society, that is, production falls short of the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people, or China's international position as the largest developing country in the world. Development is still the key to solving all our problems. We must keep economic development as the central task and give it our undivided attention.

As long as we make full use of this important period of strategic opportunities, respect the law of development, formulate new thinking on development, solve problems hindering development, accelerate the change of the growth model, spur change in the course of pursuing development, and promote development while working for change, we can certainly achieve sustained and sound economic development.

We should unswervingly take expanding domestic demand as our long-term strategy for economic development, and make full use of the basic function of consumption and the key role of investment. The difficulty in and key to expanding domestic demand lie in consumption, and that is also where the potential lies. To expand individual consumption, we should enhance people's ability to consume, keep their consumption expectations stable, boost their desire to consume, improve the consumption environment and make economic growth more consumption-driven.

In the current stage, the role investment plays in promoting economic growth cannot be underestimated. China has both investment capability and investment demand, but the key is to make investment in the needed sectors, optimize the structure of investment, and improve its performance and returns. Governmental investment is important in guiding nongovernmental investment, but its share of the country's total investment is decreasing, so we must further relax controls over market access for nongovernmental investment and stimulate it.

We should energetically change the growth model and speed up structural adjustment of industry. China's productive forces develop on multiple levels, which gives us plenty of room to maneuver. Industries, whether traditional or emerging, labor-intensive or capital-intensive, all have room for development. The important task is to optimize resources allocation and industrial distribution, and solve the following problems: excess production capacity, the lack of core technology, products with low value-added, low-level and redundant industrial projects, and different regions having similar industrial structures. We must accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, energetically develop new- and high-tech industries, and raise product quality and competitiveness.

We should strengthen policy guidance; encourage enterprise acquisitions and reorganizations across industries, regions and forms of ownership; and allow market forces to determine enterprises' success or failure. We should promote sound development of strategic emerging industries, with the focus on expanding their share in the domestic market and making breakthroughs in major and key technologies.

We should promote the integration of IT application and industrialization, more quickly build next-generation information and communication infrastructure, and spread the use of information network technology.

We should develop and expand the service sector, and attach equal importance to producer and consumer service industries and to modern and traditional service industries.

In response to people's expectations of having a good living environment, we should greatly strengthen ecological improvement and environmental protection. The state of the ecological environment affects the level of people's wellbeing and also posterity and the future of our nation. We should adhere to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment and endeavor to promote green, circular, and low-carbon development.

We should greatly boost the conservation and reuse of energy and resources, give priority to saving energy in industry, transportation and construction and in public institutions, restrict total energy consumption, and reduce energy and materials consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. We should speed up adjusting the economic structure and distribution and upgrading related standards, practices, and laws and regulations. We should adopt effective measures to prevent and control pollution and change the way we work and live. We should resolve to solve the problems of serious air, water, and soil pollution that affect the people's vital interests; improve environmental quality, and safeguard people's health, and give the people hope through our concrete action and achievements. We should do our meteorological, geological and seismic work well and become better able to prevent and mitigate natural disasters. We should optimize development of the country's territory, carry out development at a proper pace and adjust its spatial layout. We should strengthen comprehensive marine management, develop the marine economy, become better able to exploit marine resources, protect the marine ecological environment, and safeguard China's maritime rights and interests.

We should continue to fully implement the master strategy for regional development and promote balanced development between regions. We should make full use of the comparative strengths of each region, make plans comprehensively and give guidance tailored to different circumstances. We should give high priority to large-scale development of the western region, fully revitalize the old industrial bases in northeast China, spur the rise of the central region, and support the eastern region in taking the lead in development. We should increase support for old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poor areas and alleviate poverty in contiguous areas with acute difficulties.