The government is determined that China should adopt a more balanced and sustainable path of growth in order to improve public livelihoods and the distribution of wealth over the next five years, a development blueprint has revealed.
Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday unveiled the draft of the 12th Five-Year Plan, which also focuses on tackling problems linked to rapid economic growth, such as rising inflation, environmental costs and the yawning income gap.
The document will be submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, which also began its full annual session Saturday.
The country's top economic planning body elaborated the draft document Sunday, stressing the urgent need to raise living standards and for the public to better enjoy the successes of economic development.
"We put more stress on economic growth in the past five years, but now we are giving prominence to securing and improving people's livelihoods," Zhang Ping, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said at a press conference.
"We've achieved a foundation of materials through development … the 12th Five-Year Plan projects specific goals and detailed requirements in income distribution, employment and public services, as well as healthcare, education and other social security fields," he said.
Policymakers are prioritizing serving the public, as they called for the new plan to establish a "basic public service mechanism," the first such move in a government guiding document.
A Morgan Stanley report said the phrase "improving people's livelihoods" reflected a policy shift in the country's leadership, who have grown increasingly aware of the dangers posed by the income gap, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A major focus for the government will be to slow growth to 7 percent annually over the next five years, as central authorities try to temper the pursuit of wealth with the balanced development provided by wealth equality and care for the environment.
The national average income will also have a targeted rise of 7 percent annually during the same period, a boost from the 5 percent rate stipulated for the 2006-10 period.
The new "mechanism" consists of nine major aspects, according to Xu Xianping, vice minister of the NDRC at Sunday's conference, which include public education, employment service, social security, health, population planning, culture, infrastructure, housing and environmental protection.
In line with this shift, Premier Wen announced Saturday, in his annual government work report that containing volatile inflation is a priority for this year.
Shan Guangnai, a researcher with the Institute of Sociology at Chinese Academy of Social Science, told the Global Times that transform the economic growth mode and curbing growth speed is essential and urgent.
"Growth has been largely reliant on huge energy consumption and therefore caused environmental degradation," Shan said.
As resources dry up, this means of development will lose its effectiveness, Shan said.
China's GDP for 2009 accounted for 8 percent of the world's total, but the country also consumed 18 percent of the world's energy, 44 percent of its steel and 53 percent of its cement, according to NDRC data.
Yu Lingyun, an administrative law professor at Tsinghua University, struck a cautious note, telling the Global Times that "the realization of these targets depends on implementation by local governments."
Yu also added that governance transparency and information openness should be improved upon.
Shan said evaluations of officials' performances also needed to be adjusted, adding that the green economic achievements and income growth deserve larger consideration, instead of a simple focus on economic figures.
