'Reform' mentioned 97 times in government work report
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has delivered a government work report at the opening meeting of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress, summing up the government's work in the last five years and presenting plan for the future.
This year is significant to the Chinese government as it marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up. This year's NPC session is also the first one after 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The drafting team took special efforts while drafting the report.
Drafting the report
The drafting team makes particular emphasis on taking in people's suggestions and advice. The team has made good use of the Internet to collect people's opinions on government's work.
China has more than 772 million people online. For the team that drafted the government work report, that means having a rich source of suggestions and proposals. The team collected more than 317,000 suggestions from Chinese netizens, some of which, particularly those concerning people's livelihood, made it into the work report that Premier Li delivered.
Huang Shouhong, head of the report's drafting team and director of State Council research office, said: "We collected suggestions from Weibo, Wechat, and online forums. With such a large online population, the Internet is an efficient and effective way of collecting opinions from all walks of life. We'll keep our online platforms as a convenient and normal way for people to participate in politics."
Huang did point out the difficulties of drafting the reports. He especially took note of the length limits set by the premier.
"The premier specifically said the report shall not be longer than 20,000 Chinese characters," said Huang. "So it is rather hard to sum up China's achievements in the past five years and include all the suggestions and petitions from the people."
Clear situation awareness
Even though China's GDP growth rate reached 6.9 percent in 2017, surpassing expectation and accelerating for the first time in the last five years, Chinese government dial the goal for 2018's GDP growth back to 6.5 percent.
Huang said, "We based this on China's current reality. China's economy has transitioned from fast to high-quality growth. China needs to bear the pressures of a slowing economy and aim for the changing model of development and building potential through reform and innovation."
Huang stressed that China will not seek short time boom with radical measures, but aim for long term growth by encouraging innovation and high quality building.
Determined of reform
Because 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of China's era of reform and opening up, the word "reform" appears in the work report 97 times, indicating the government's determination to deepen reform.
"This year we will further deepen reform and opening up, optimize the business environment, and stimulate market vitality and creativity. We will push for the high-quality development of the economy," Huang said.