Changjiang Daily:

Transport is the artery of the market economy and provides substantial support for serving and ensuring people's livelihoods. Over the past year, what practical work has the MOT undertaken to improve people's livelihoods and facilitate travel? Thank you.

Li Xiaopeng:

Thanks for your questions on the practical work concerning people's well-being . General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that the people's aspiration for a better life is what we are striving for. In fact, all of our work on transport directly affects people's well-being. Meeting people's expectations is an important goal for us. While doing our work on transportation, we select practical work concerning people's well-being each year and advance the implementation. Since 2015, this work has been carried forward for eight consecutive years. Last year, we put forward 12 pieces of practical work concerning people's well-being, all of which have been completed. In the future, we will continue to work on that. Next, Mr. Xu will give you a detailed introduction.

Xu Chengguang:

Let me elaborate further on that. Mr. Li mentioned that transport is essential to the country's stability and people's well-being; it serves hundreds of millions of people. Our work on transport is related to work in all fields. Over the years, the MOT has upheld the people-centered development philosophy. Since 2015, we have launched a series of practical work concerning people's well-being in the transport sector every year for eight consecutive years and developed a regular working mechanism to ensure that all the practical efforts we launch every year are fully implemented.

Last year, we came up with 12 pieces of practical work concerning people's well-being, all of which were accomplished. For example, to make travel safer in rural areas, we carried out a life protection project for rural highway safety, covering 135,000 kilometers of rural highways and reconstructing 13,800 dilapidated highway bridges. To facilitate the travel of elderly people, we created over 2,700 urban tram and bus routes with services that provide care and respect for the elderly and reconstructed over 9,500 urban tram and bus stops, continuously improving travel services for the convenience of senior citizens. To deal with limited parking availability at expressway service areas for trucks, we added 21,500 parking spaces for trucks at expressway service areas and built more than 400 service centers for drivers. To address the difficulties for crew members of international voyages to change shifts during epidemic prevention and control, we coordinated with multiple parties. We tried to gain their understanding and support. During that period, 170,000 shifts of crew members on international voyages were completed, resolving the problem of being able to embark but not disembark.

In addition, we completed a series of practical projects concerning people's well-being in regard to railways, civil aviation and postal services, providing all-round and multi-dimensional services for people's travel. Regarding railways, we revised the regulations for railway passenger traffic to allow more children to enjoy preferential policies based on the real-name-based ticket system. We prevented and controlled noise pollution on railways, such as the train whistle. Regarding civil aviation, we launched special campaigns to address the temporary cancellation of flights, with the number of flights canceled within 24 hours dropping from 16,000 in June 2022 to 6,000. We accelerated the application of whole-journey luggage tracking and provided whole-journey tracking for 2.317 million pieces of luggage on 67,000 flights. In terms of postal services, we fully implemented projects to roll out express delivery services in rural areas. As a result, 95% of administrative villages now have access to delivery services. Meanwhile, we worked to safeguard the rights and interests of couriers and built over 30,000 service centers for them, such as the "warm bee post house."

In 2023, we will focus on the most pressing, most immediate issues that concern the public the most. We will launch a series of new practical initiatives concerning people's well-being in the transport sector, including the "sunshine rescue" action on expressways, special action to care for truck drivers, a project to improve service capacity at ports, and measures to provide convenient waterway passenger services. With all these efforts, we will heed the public's concerns and strive to fulfill their aspirations. We will try to provide more considerate and heart-warming services for the people and employees in the transport sector, ensure easier movement of people and a smoother flow of goods, and help people feel more satisfied, happier, and more secure. Thank you.