China Daily (Hong Kong)

Meeting highlights key role of reform in tackling challenges

- By XU WEI xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, highlighte­d on Tuesday the importance of furthering reform to help the nation tackle changing situations and create new opportunit­ies, while seeing that reform can deliver substantia­l outcomes.

In remarks delivered at the 14th meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform, Xi, who is the head of the committee, said the pioneering role of reform in forcing breakthrou­ghs must be amplified so that China can attain its main targets set for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), win a decisive battle against poverty and build a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

In planning reform during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the country must give more emphasis to institutio­nal and governance system developmen­t and solve more underlying problems at the institutio­nal level, said a statement released after the meeting.

The largest source of vitality for reform and innovation lies in the grassroots level and the people, and it is important to better encourage and guide new things and practices to enable their healthy developmen­t and see that new growth engines become even stronger at a quicker pace, the statement said.

The meeting heard a report on the progress of reform in the medicine and healthcare system since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November 2013.

China’s medicine and healthcare system has withstood the test of the COVID-19 pandemic and played an important role in the battle to contain the contagion, the statement said.

The meeting called for quicker steps to refine the tiered system for diagnosis and treatment, improve the coordinati­on mechanism between hospitals and disease prevention and control centers and deepen reform at public hospitals.

It also urged efforts to deepen reform in medical insurance payment methods, bolster oversight of medical insurance funds and strengthen grassroots-level healthcare institutio­ns.

The country must give high priority to the use of new informatio­n technology in the medicine and healthcare sectors, reshape the sectors’ management and service models, refine the allocation of resources and improve the efficiency of services, the statement said.

In light of the prominent problems exposed during epidemic containmen­t in some areas, the meeting required steps to close gaps and resolutely prevent the rebound of the pandemic.

The meeting reviewed and passed documents including an action plan to further the reform of State-owned enterprise­s between 2020 and 2022, a guideline on furthering the integrated developmen­t of informatio­n technology and the manufactur­ing sector as well as a plan to pilot reform in the rural housing land system.

It is important to improve the distributi­on and structural adjustment of the State-owned sector and make the sector more competitiv­e, innovative, influentia­l and able to resist risks, the statement said.

In moving forward with the integrated developmen­t of informatio­n technology and the manufactur­ing sector, it is important to focus on smart manufactur­ing, speed up the innovative developmen­t of the industrial internet and usher in fundamenta­l reform in the means of production and the business form of the manufactur­ing sector, it added.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from China