Explanation on the "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development"
Xi Jinping
(Source: "Qiushi" Issue 22, 2015)
Entrusted by the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, I will now explain to the plenary session the relevant situation on the drafting of the "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development".
1. Drafting process of proposals
The "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period is the decisive stage for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and realizing the first centenary goal of the "two centenary goals" set by our party. Formulation and implementation of the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" recommendations, clarifying the strategic intentions of the party and the country, clarifying the guiding ideology, basic principles, goal requirements, basic concepts, and major measures for development, and drawing a blueprint for national development in the next five years, are related to the coordinated advancement of the strategic layout of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, comprehensively deepening reforms, comprehensively governing the country according to law, and comprehensively and strictly administering the party. It is related to the sustained and healthy development of our country's economic and social development, and is related to the overall situation of socialist modernization.
To this end, in January this year, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided that the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China will review the “13th Five-Year Plan” planning proposals and establish a document drafting group with me as the leader, Comrade Li Keqiang and Comrade Zhang Gaoli as deputy leaders, and responsible comrades from relevant departments and localities participating. It will be responsible for drafting the proposal under the leadership of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.
On January 28, the Party Central Committee issued the "Notice on Soliciting Opinions on the Recommendations for the Study of the 13th Five-Year Plan at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Party" to solicit opinions and suggestions within a certain range within the party. On February 10, the document drafting group held its first plenary meeting, and the drafting of the proposal was officially launched.
Judging from the feedback from all aspects, everyone agreed that the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China focused on studying the issues and suggestions for the "13th Five-Year Plan" and making suggestions, which is of great significance for upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, realizing the "Two Centenary Goals" and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Comprehensive judgment shows that during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, my country's development is still in an important period of strategic opportunities where great achievements can be made. However, the connotation of the period of strategic opportunities has undergone profound changes. my country's development faces both many favorable conditions and many risks and challenges. Everyone generally hopes that the basic ideas and main goals of my country's economic and social development during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period will be clarified through the formulation of recommendations. In particular, we will promote development with new development concepts, propose some major landmark strategies, major projects, and major measures, and strive to solve outstanding problems and obvious shortcomings to ensure that we build a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way as scheduled and maintain sustained and healthy economic and social development. During the drafting process, the document drafting team fully considered and carefully absorbed opinions and suggestions from all parties.
In the past nine months since its establishment, the document drafting group has conducted in-depth special research, extensively solicited opinions from all parties, and held multiple meetings for discussion and revision. According to the decision of the Political Bureau meeting of the CPC Central Committee, at the end of July, the draft proposal was circulated to a certain extent within the party for opinions, including soliciting the opinions of some veteran comrades within the party. The opinions of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party, leaders of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, and people without party affiliation were also specifically listened to. During this period, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held three meetings and the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held two meetings to review the draft proposals respectively.
Judging from the feedback, all regions and departments fully affirmed the draft proposal. Everyone agreed that the draft proposal embodies the "Four Comprehensives" strategic layout and the "Five-in-One" overall layout, reflects the decision-making and deployment of the Party Central Committee since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, complies with the inherent requirements of the new normal of my country's economic development, and has a strong ideological, strategic, forward-looking and guiding nature. The draft proposal proposes innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared development concepts, making new breakthroughs in theory and practice. It has great guiding significance for solving development problems, enhancing development momentum, and consolidating development advantages. The draft recommendations adhere to a problem-oriented approach, focus on outstanding issues and obvious shortcomings, respond to the demands and expectations of the people, and propose a series of new major strategies and important measures, which play an important role in maintaining sustained and healthy economic and social development.
In the process of soliciting opinions, many good opinions and suggestions were put forward by various parties, mainly including the following aspects.First, it is recommended to make a more in-depth and forward-looking analysis and summary of the opportunities and challenges faced by my country's development during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period. Second, it is recommended to further highlight livelihood indicators such as employment, education, social security, housing, and medical care that are of general concern to the people. Third, it is recommended to seize the opportunities brought by the new round of scientific and technological revolution, gather superior resources into key areas, and strive to achieve breakthroughs in key core technologies. Fourth, it is recommended to further increase the weight of green indicators in all indicators of the “13th Five-Year Plan” and make protecting people’s health and improving environmental quality as more binding hard indicators. Fifth, it is recommended to pay attention to promoting the opening up of inland areas, especially the central and western regions. Sixth, it is recommended to pay more attention to promoting social equity by improving secondary distribution, clarify policy measures for targeted poverty alleviation and targeted poverty alleviation, and use more public resources to improve the social security system.
The central government instructs the document drafting team to carefully study and absorb opinions and suggestions from all parties. The document drafting team comprehensively summarized and analyzed all opinions and suggestions item by item, and absorbed as much as possible.
2. Main considerations and basic framework of the proposed draft
The drafting of the proposal fully considered the trends and requirements of my country’s economic and social development during the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” period.
First, the "13th Five-Year Plan", as the first five-year plan after my country's economic development enters the new normal, must adapt to the new normal, grasp the new normal, and lead the new normal.Under the new normal, my country's economic development shows three major characteristics: speed change, structural optimization, and power conversion. The growth rate will shift from high speed to medium-high speed, the development mode will shift from scale and speed to quality and efficiency, the economic structure adjustment will shift from focusing on incremental expansion to adjusting stocks and optimizing increments, and the driving force of development will shift from relying mainly on inputs such as resources and low-cost labor to being driven by innovation. These changes do not depend on people's will, but are inevitable requirements of the stage characteristics of my country's economic development. When formulating suggestions for economic and social development during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, these trends and requirements must be fully considered, and strategic planning must be carried out in accordance with the general requirements of adapting to the new normal, grasping the new normal, and leading the new normal.
Second, in the face of new trends, new opportunities, new contradictions and new challenges in economic and social development, when planning for economic and social development during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, we must establish new development concepts and use new development concepts to lead development actions. The ancients said: "Principal, things are what they are, and things are what they are." The development concept is the forerunner of development actions. It is something that manages the overall situation, the fundamentals, the direction, and the long-term. It is a concentrated expression of development ideas, development direction, and development focus. If the development concept is correct, the goals and tasks will be easily determined, and the policies and measures will also be determined accordingly. To this end, the draft proposal puts forward the development concepts of innovation, coordination, green, openness, and sharing, and uses these five development concepts as the main line to lay out the draft proposal. These five development concepts are a concentrated reflection of my country’s development ideas, development direction, and development focus during the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” and beyond. They are also a concentrated expression of my country’s development experience over the past 30 years of reform and opening up, and reflect our party’s new understanding of the laws of my country’s development.
Third, the "13th Five-Year Plan", as the final plan for building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, must firmly address the shortcomings of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way and make more efforts to make up for the shortcomings. For example, the poverty alleviation of rural poor people is a prominent shortcoming. We cannot announce that we have built a moderately prosperous society in all respects while on the other hand, there are still tens of millions of people whose living standards are below the poverty alleviation standard line. This will not only affect the people's satisfaction with building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, but also affect the international community's recognition of my country's comprehensive completion of a moderately prosperous society. In addition, there are also some obvious shortcomings in the development of social undertakings, ecological environment protection, and people's livelihood security. When planning for economic and social development during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, we must do our best to make up for the shortcomings and strive to improve the coordination and balance of development.
In addition, considering that after the recommendations are adopted, the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” outline must be formulated based on the recommendations, and there must be a reasonable division of labor between the two documents. Therefore, the content of the recommendations focuses on establishing development concepts and clarifying development directions, ideas, key tasks, and major measures, while some specific work arrangements are left to the outline to better reflect and give full play to the macroscopic, strategic, and guiding nature of the recommendations.
In the process of drafting the proposal, we pay attention to the following principles. The first is to adhere to the unity of goal orientation and problem orientation, not only working backward from the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects to clarify the tasks that must be completed at the time point, but also working backward from the problems that urgently need to be solved to clarify the ways and methods to solve the problems. The second is to insist on coordinating domestic and global perspectives, not only proactively adapt to and actively lead the new normal of economic development with new concepts, new ideas, and new measures, but also plan from the perspective of global economic connections, and pay attention to improving the ability to allocate resources on a global scale. The third is to adhere to the coordination of comprehensive planning and highlighted key points, not only focusing on comprehensively promoting economic construction, political construction, cultural construction, social construction, ecological civilization construction, opening to the outside world, national defense construction and party building, but also highlighting weak links and lagging areas, focusing on tackling key problems, and proposing feasible ideas and pragmatic measures. The fourth is to adhere to the combination of strategy and operation, which not only emphasizes the macroscopic, strategic and guiding nature of the plan, but also highlights the binding, operable, inspectable and easy-to-evaluate nature of the plan, so as to achieve a combination of reality and reality.
In terms of structure, the proposal is divided into three major sections and eight parts. The introduction and the first and second parts constitute the first section and belong to the general introduction. The first part talks about the situation and guiding ideology in the decisive stage of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, summarizes the major achievements in my country's development during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, analyzes the basic characteristics of my country's development environment during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, and puts forward the guiding ideology and principles that must be followed for my country's development during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period. The second part talks about the main goals and basic concepts of my country's economic and social development during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, puts forward new goal requirements for building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, and proposes and explains the development concepts of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing.
Parts 3 to 7 constitute the second section and are divided into chapters, respectively elaborating and deploying the insistence on innovative development, coordinated development, green development, open development and shared development. The third part talks about adhering to innovative development and focusing on improving the quality and efficiency of development, starting from seven aspects: cultivating new driving forces for development, expanding new space for development, in-depth implementation of innovation-driven development strategy, vigorously promoting agricultural modernization, building a new industrial system, building a new development system, and innovating and improving macro-control methods. The fourth part talks about adhering to coordinated development and striving to form a balanced development structure, starting from four aspects: promoting coordinated regional development, promoting coordinated development of urban and rural areas, promoting coordinated development of material civilization and spiritual civilization, and promoting integrated development of economic construction and national defense construction. The fifth part talks about adhering to green development and focusing on improving the ecological environment, starting from six aspects: promoting the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, accelerating the construction of main functional areas, promoting low-carbon recycling development, comprehensively saving and efficiently utilizing resources, increasing environmental governance, and building a strong ecological security barrier. The sixth part talks about adhering to open development and striving to achieve win-win cooperation, starting from six aspects: improving the strategic layout of opening to the outside world, forming a new system of opening up to the outside world, promoting the construction of the "Belt and Road", deepening the cooperative development between the mainland and Hong Kong and Macao, and the mainland and Taiwan, actively participating in global economic governance, and actively assuming international responsibilities and obligations. The seventh part talks about adhering to shared development and focusing on improving people's well-being, starting from eight aspects: increasing the supply of public services, implementing poverty alleviation projects, improving the quality of education, promoting employment and entrepreneurship, narrowing the income gap, establishing a fairer and more sustainable social security system, promoting the construction of a healthy China, and promoting balanced population development.
The eighth part and the conclusion constitute the third section. The eighth part talks about strengthening and improving the party's leadership and providing a strong guarantee for the realization of the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", starting from six aspects: improving the party's leadership in economic and social development work systems and mechanisms, mobilizing the people to unite and work hard, accelerating the construction of a talented country, using legal thinking and legal methods to promote development, strengthening and innovating social governance, and ensuring that the goals and tasks recommended by the "13th Five-Year Plan" are implemented. The concluding remarks call on the entire party and the people of all ethnic groups to work together as one and work hard to win the great victory in the decisive stage of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
3. Several issues that need to be highlighted
The draft proposal puts forward a series of new development requirements and major measures. Here, a brief explanation of several of these issues is given.
First, on maintaining medium-to-high economic growth. The draft proposal sets out the goal of maintaining medium-to-high-speed economic growth in the next five years. The main consideration is to ensure that by 2020 the goal of doubling GDP and per capita income of urban and rural residents compared to 2010 is achieved, the necessary growth rate must be maintained. From the perspective of doubling GDP, the bottom line of average annual economic growth from 2016 to 2020 is more than 6.5%. Looking at the doubling of the per capita income of urban and rural residents, the per capita disposable income of urban residents and the per capita net income of rural residents in 2010 were 19,109 yuan and 5,919 yuan respectively. By 2020, the average annual economic growth rate during the 13th Five-Year Plan period must reach at least 6.5%. Maintaining medium-to-high economic growth is conducive to improving people's livelihood and allowing the people to more effectively feel the results of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way. As my country's economic development enters the new normal, it will take a certain amount of time and space to resolve overcapacity, optimize and upgrade the industrial structure, and realize innovation-driven development. The downward pressure on the economy is obvious, and it is difficult to maintain a high growth rate. Taking into account the positive guidance of market expectations and leaving a certain amount of leeway, and based on comprehensive opinions from all aspects, the draft proposal proposes the goal of maintaining medium-to-high economic growth.
Major domestic and foreign research institutions generally believe that my country’s average annual economic potential growth rate during the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” period is 6%-7%. Taken together, it is possible for my country's economy to maintain a growth rate of about 7% in the future, but it faces many uncertainties. This is because global economic and w88 growth will continue to be weak in the coming period, and my country's investment and consumer demand growth will slow down. The formation of new market space requires a process. In the absence of significant improvement in economic structure and technical conditions, the strengthening of constraints such as resource security supply, environmental quality, and greenhouse gas emission reduction will compress the space for economic growth. There are also other risks in economic operations, such as high leverage ratios and rising economic risks, which have restricted economic growth. At the same time, as the economic aggregate continues to increase, the growth rate will slow down accordingly. This is a basic rule.
my country's development during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period depends on both speed, increment, and quality. We must strive to achieve quality, efficient, water-free, and sustainable growth, and strive to achieve economic growth by transforming the economic development model, optimizing the economic structure, improving the ecological environment, and improving the quality and efficiency of development.
Second, regarding the accelerated increase in the urbanization rate of the registered population. The urbanization rate of the registered population directly reflects the health of urbanization. According to the "National New Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)", the urbanization rate of the registered population will reach about 45% in 2020. Calculated based on the urbanization rate of the registered population of 35.9% in 2013, the average annual increase is 1.3 percentage points, and an average of more than 16 million people need to transfer their household registrations every year. Now, based on the permanent population, my country's urbanization rate is close to 55%, and the urban permanent population has reached 750 million. The problem is that these 750 million people include 250 million migrant permanent residents, who are mainly migrant workers. They still cannot enjoy equal access to public services such as education, employment services, social security, medical care, and affordable housing in cities and towns, which has caused some complex economic and social problems.
The proposed draft proposes to accelerate the urbanization rate of the registered population in order to accelerate the implementation of the goal set by the central government to enable about 100 million migrant workers and other permanent residents to settle in cities and towns. These 100 million people mainly refer to the population of rural students entering cities for further education and joining the army, the agricultural migrant population who have been employed and lived in cities for more than 5 years, and the families who have migrated.
It is of great significance to achieve 100 million people settling in cities and towns. From a supply perspective, as the total working-age population decreases, it is of great significance for stabilizing labor supply and wage costs and cultivating a team of modern industrial workers. From a demand perspective, it is of great significance to expand consumer demand, stabilize the real estate market, and expand investment in urban infrastructure and public service facilities. Achieving this goal is not only conducive to stabilizing economic growth, but also conducive to promoting social equity, justice, harmony and stability. It is an inherent requirement for a comprehensively well-off society to benefit more people. This requires increasing the implementation of household registration system reform measures and accelerating the improvement of relevant supporting policies to ensure that this goal is achieved.
Third, regarding the realization of poverty alleviation for the rural poor under my country’s current standards, the removal of all poverty-stricken counties, and the resolution of overall regional poverty. Eradicating poverty among the rural poor is the most arduous task in building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way. my country's current poverty alleviation standard is that the annual per capita net income of farmers is 2,300 yuan at constant prices in 2010, and the poverty alleviation standard at current prices in 2014 is 2,800 yuan. According to this standard, there were still 70.17 million rural poor people in the country at the end of 2014. Taking price levels and other factors into consideration, the standards calculated based on current prices are updated year by year. According to estimates, if adjusted for an annual growth rate of 6%, the national poverty alleviation standard in 2020 will be approximately 4,000 yuan per capita net income. In the future, the actual living standards represented by the poverty alleviation standards can roughly reach the basic level required to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020, and can continue to be used.
By implementing poverty alleviation projects and implementing targeted poverty alleviation and targeted poverty alleviation, the goal of lifting 70.17 million rural poor people out of poverty can be achieved. From 2011 to 2014, the number of rural people lifted out of poverty each year was 43.29 million, 23.39 million, 16.5 million, and 12.32 million respectively. Therefore, by taking strong and effective measures, the task of reducing poverty by 10 million people every year in the future can be accomplished. Specifically, by 2020, 30 million people can be lifted out of poverty through industrial support; 10 million people can be lifted out of poverty through job transfer; 10 million people can be lifted out of poverty through relocation, for a total of about 50 million people. There are still more than 20 million poor people who have completely or partially lost the ability to work. All of them can be included in the coverage of subsistence allowances, so that social security policies can completely eliminate poverty.
Fourth, regarding the implementation of a number of major national science and technology projects and the establishment of a number of national laboratories in major innovation fields. To implement the innovation-driven development strategy, we must put scientific and technological innovation in important fields in a more prominent position and implement a number of major scientific and technological projects that are related to the country's overall and long-term impact. This will not only help our country break the situation where major key core technologies are controlled by others in strategically contested areas, but also help open up new industrial development directions and key areas and cultivate new economic growth points. In August 2014, we determined to speed up the implementation of the existing 16 major national science and technology projects, further focus on goals, highlight key points, and conquer key core technologies such as high-end general-purpose chips, integrated circuit equipment, broadband mobile communications, high-end CNC machine tools, nuclear power plants, and new drug creation, accelerate the formation of a number of strategic technologies and strategic products, and cultivate emerging industries. On this basis, with 2030 as the time node, we will select a number of major science and technology projects that reflect the national strategic intentions and strive to make breakthroughs. Starting from longer-term strategic needs, we must insist on doing something and not doing anything, and deploy a number of major scientific and technological projects that reflect the national strategic intentions in the fields of aerospace engines, quantum communications, intelligent manufacturing and robotics, deep space and deep-sea exploration, key new materials, brain science, and health security. Already deployed projects and newly deployed projects must form a systematic layout of successive echelons, give full play to the advantages of the new national system under market economy conditions, concentrate efforts, and coordinate to tackle key problems, so as to provide support for climbing the strategic commanding heights, improving my country's comprehensive competitiveness, and ensuring national security.
The gap in scientific and technological economic strength between my country and developed countries is mainly reflected in innovation capabilities. To improve innovation capabilities, we must consolidate the material and technological foundation for independent innovation and accelerate the construction of an innovation basic platform led by national laboratories. National laboratories have become an important carrier for major developed countries to seize the commanding heights of scientific and technological innovation. National laboratories such as Argonne, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Berkeley in the United States and the Helmholtz Research Center in Germany are all research bases that carry out collaborative innovation around national missions and rely on interdisciplinary, large-scale collaboration and high-intensity support. At present, my country's scientific and technological innovation has entered a new stage from focusing on tracking to the coexistence of tracking, parallel running, and leading. It is urgent to be oriented by national goals and strategic needs, aiming at the international scientific and technological frontier, and deploying a number of larger national laboratories with cross-disciplinary integration and comprehensive integration, optimizing the allocation of human, financial and material resources, and forming a new pattern of collaborative innovation. The main consideration is to establish a group of national laboratories in some major innovation fields, create a highland that gathers first-class talents at home and abroad, organize collaborative research with a major leading role, and form a scientific and technological innovation strength that represents the national level, is recognized by international peers, and has the right to speak internationally, and becomes an important strategic innovation force that seizes the commanding heights of international science and technology.
Fifth, on strengthening overall coordination, reforming and improving the financial regulatory framework that adapts to the development of modern financial markets. Finance is the core of the modern economy and affects and even determines the healthy development of the economy to a great extent. Modern financial development presents the characteristics of multiple types of institutions, large comprehensive business scale, complex product structure, high transaction frequency, fast cross-border flows, fast risk transmission, and wide scope of influence. After the outbreak of the international financial crisis, major countries have intensified the reform of their financial regulatory systems. The core is to improve regulatory standards and form complementary regulatory synergies and risk disposal capabilities.
In recent years, the development of my country's financial industry has accelerated significantly, forming a diversified financial institution system, a complex product structure system, an information-based trading system, and a more open financial market. In particular, the trend of comprehensive operations is obvious. This poses a major challenge to the current separate supervision system. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward the reform task of improving the regulatory coordination mechanism to strengthen financial supervision. The recent frequent exposure of local risks, especially the recent violent fluctuations in the capital market, shows that the current regulatory framework has institutional contradictions that are not suitable for the development of my country's financial industry. It also reminds us once again that we must ensure financial security through reform and effectively prevent systemic risks. It is necessary to adhere to the direction of market-oriented reform, accelerate the establishment of a modern financial regulatory framework that is in line with the characteristics of modern finance, coordinate supervision, and is strong and effective, so as to maintain the bottom line of preventing systemic risks.
Since the international financial crisis, major economies have carried out major reforms in their financial regulatory systems. The main approach is to coordinate the supervision of important financial institutions and financial holding companies in the system, especially the prudent management of these financial institutions; coordinate the supervision of important financial infrastructure, including important payment systems, clearing institutions, financial asset registration and custody institutions, etc., to maintain the stable and efficient operation of financial infrastructure; coordinate and be responsible for comprehensive statistics of the financial industry, and strengthen and improve financial macro-control and maintain financial stability through full coverage of data collection in the financial industry. These practices are worthy of our study and reference.
Sixth, regarding the implementation of dual control actions on the total amount and intensity of energy and water consumption, construction land, etc.. To promote the construction of ecological civilization and solve the problems of tight resource constraints, serious environmental pollution, and ecosystem degradation, we must take some hard measures and work hard to achieve results. Implementing dual control actions on the total volume and intensity of energy and water consumption, construction land, etc. is a hard measure. This means that it is necessary to control not only the total amount, but also the intensity of energy consumption per unit of GDP, water consumption, and construction land. If this work is done well, it will not only save energy, water and land resources, reduce pollutant emissions from the source, but also force a change in the economic development model and improve the green level of my country's economic development.
The “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” for the first time uses energy consumption intensity per unit of GDP as a binding indicator, and the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” proposes reasonable control of total energy consumption. Looking now, this is both necessary and effective. According to the current severe situation faced by the resources and environment, on the basis of continuing to implement dual control of total energy consumption and consumption intensity, water resources and construction land must also implement dual control of total volume and intensity. As binding indicators, a target responsibility system should be established and implemented in a reasonable manner. It is necessary to study the establishment of a market-oriented mechanism for dual control, establish a budget management system, a paid use and transaction system, and use more market means to achieve the goal of dual control.
Seventh, regarding the exploration and implementation of the pilot program of cultivated land rotation and fallow system. After long-term development, the development and utilization of cultivated land in my country has been too intensive, and the soil fertility in some places has been seriously overdrafted. Soil erosion, severe overexploitation of groundwater, soil degradation, and increased non-point source pollution have become prominent contradictions restricting the sustainable development of agriculture. At present, domestic grain stocks have increased significantly, and the burden of storage subsidies is heavy. At the same time, grain prices in the international market have fallen, and grain prices in domestic and foreign markets have been significantly inverted. Taking advantage of the abundant food supply in domestic and foreign markets at this stage, implementing cultivated land rotation and fallowing in some areas is not only conducive to the recuperation of cultivated land and sustainable agricultural development, but also conducive to balancing the contradiction between food supply and demand, stabilizing farmers' income, and reducing financial pressure.
To implement the cultivated land rotation and fallow system, the state can focus on conducting pilot projects in groundwater funnel areas, heavy metal pollution areas, and severely ecologically degraded areas based on financial resources and food supply and demand conditions, arrange a certain area of cultivated land for fallow, and provide necessary grain or cash subsidies to farmers who are fallow. This pilot project must be carried out on the premise of ensuring national food security and not affecting farmers' income. Fallowing cannot reduce cultivated land, engage in non-agriculturalization, or weaken comprehensive agricultural production capabilities, and ensure that food can be produced and supplied when urgently needed. At the same time, we must accelerate the promotion of agriculture going global and increase the supply of domestic agricultural products. The situation of cultivated land rotation and fallow is complex, and it is necessary to explore and conduct pilot projects first.
Eighth, regarding the implementation of a vertical management system for monitoring, supervision and law enforcement by environmental protection agencies below the provincial level. The ecological environment, especially the air, water, and soil, is seriously polluted, which has become a prominent shortcoming in building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way. Reversing environmental deterioration and improving environmental quality is the eager expectation of the broad masses of the people. It is an important task that must be highly valued and effectively promoted during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. The current block-based local environmental protection management system has caused some places to focus on development but not on environmental protection, intervening in environmental monitoring, supervision and law enforcement, making it difficult to implement environmental protection responsibilities. There are many phenomena of non-compliance with laws, lax law enforcement and failure to investigate violations. Taken together, there are four outstanding problems in the current environmental protection system: first, it is difficult to implement the supervision responsibilities of local governments and related departments; second, it is difficult to solve the interference of local protectionism in environmental monitoring, supervision and law enforcement; third, it is difficult to adapt to the new requirements of coordinating and solving cross-regional and cross-basin environmental problems; fourth, it is difficult to standardize and strengthen the team building of local environmental protection agencies.
The vertical management of monitoring, supervision and law enforcement of environmental protection agencies below the provincial level proposed in the draft proposal mainly refers to the fact that the provincial environmental protection department directly manages the monitoring and supervision agencies of cities (prefectures) and counties and bears their personnel and working expenses. The municipal (prefecture) level environmental protection bureau implements a dual management system with the provincial environmental protection department (bureau) as the mainstay. The county level environmental protection bureau is no longer a separate agency but serves as a dispatched agency of the municipal (prefecture) level environmental protection bureau. This is a major reform of my country's environmental protection management system, which will help enhance the unity, authority and effectiveness of environmental law enforcement. This reform should be fully implemented on a pilot basis and strive to complete the reform tasks during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period.
Ninth, regarding the full implementation of the policy that a couple can have two children. At present, my country's population structure shows obvious characteristics of fewer births in older age, the willingness of the working-age population to have children is significantly reduced, and the total fertility rate of women is significantly lower than the replacement level. The current main body of childbearing is the post-80s and post-90s generation. Their concept of childbearing has changed, the cost of raising children has also increased, and the level of social security has improved. The social concept of raising children for old age has been significantly weakened, and fewer children and eugenics have become the mainstream of social fertility concepts. On the one hand, according to surveys, since the implementation of the policy that couples with one parent being an only child can have two children, there have been more than 11 million couples across the country who meet the policy conditions. As of the end of August this year, only 1.69 million couples had applied for a second child, accounting for 15.4%. On the other hand, my country's population is aging significantly. In 2014, the proportion of people over 60 years old in the total population has exceeded 15%. The proportion of the elderly population is higher than the world average, and the proportion of the population under 14 years old is lower than the world average. The working-age population has begun to absolutely decrease, and this trend is continuing. These have posed new challenges to my country's balanced population development and population security.
The full implementation of the policy that a couple can have two children can further release the fertility potential, slow down the pressure of population aging, increase labor supply, and promote balanced population development. This is a major measure to promote balanced population development from a strategic perspective for the long-term development of the Chinese nation. After careful calculations, the National Health and Family Planning Commission and other departments believe that it is feasible to implement this policy.
Comrades! Discussing, revising and adopting the “13th Five-Year Plan” planning recommendations are the main tasks of this plenary session. Doing this work well is of great significance in guiding the preparation of the national "13th Five-Year Plan" outline and leading the economic and social development during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period. Everyone must fully grasp and deeply understand the goals, concepts, tasks, and measures proposed in the draft proposal, think carefully, discuss in depth, and put forward constructive opinions and suggestions to make the draft proposal more complete. Finally, let us work together with one heart and one mind to make this plenary session a success.
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