According to Beijing’s Municipal Financial Bureau, over 80 percent of the capital city’s financial expenditure has been spent on improving people’s livelihood in the past five years.
The Municipal Financial Bureau has adopted the policy of “cutting public expenses, reusing savings, adjusting expenditure structure, and raising social investments” over the past five years to concentrate the city’s financial power in improving people’s lives. The city endeavors to make education, pension, healthcare, labor welfare, and housing all accessible to the general population.
Over the past five years, the expenditure on education from the public budget has totaled 379.5 billion yuan (US$57.34 billion), with an average annual increase of 9 percent. For basic education, Beijing has raised educational expenditure to 25,794 yuan, 45,516 yuan, and 50,803 yuan per student in primary school, junior high school, and high school respectively. For student subsidy, Beijing has developed an entire supporting system that covers pre-schooling to post-graduate education. In 2016 the city’s educational subsidy totaled nearly 1.2 billion yuan and benefited around 235,000 students, which was a record high.
In the area of pension and provision for the elderly, Beijing has spent 6.6 billion yuan over the past five years and raised the monthly pension of enterprise retirees from 2,510 yuan in 2012 to 3,786 yuan in 2017, and basic monthly pension of urban and rural residents from 357.5 yuan to 610 yuan. The city has invested an accumulation of 3.65 billion yuan to accelerate the building of social as well as home-based provision system.
In order to bolster healthcare, the Municipal Financial Bureau has invested 67.01 billion yuan in medical treatment and public health during the past five years with a yearly increase of 13.7 percent. The city has also promoted medical reform in public hospitals through expanding financial support and conducting key healthcare projects. With a total investment of 18.36 billion yuan over the past five years, the medical insurance subsidy per capita for urban and rural residents was raised from 520 yuan in 2012 to 1,052 yuan in 2017.
In addition, the city has injected 61.7 billion yuan into subsidized housing projects such as transformation of shantytowns. With such financial support Beijing has built 467,000 government-subsidized houses and transformed shantytown residence for 170,000 households. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), the city has spent over 34 billion yuan to apply earthquake resistance for 4.63 million square meters of old housing, carry out energy saving renovations for 55.04 million square meters of old housing, and conducted repairs and clean-up work for 10.33 million square meters of community area. This has benefitted altogether 819,000 households.