Exclusive for the daily Outlook Afghanistan

In March 2011, the Fourth Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC) of China endorsed the Outline of the 12th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2011 to 2015).

The document puts forward the guiding principles, main objectives, main tasks and measures of the country's economic and social development in the next five years. It also provides a blueprint for the country's progress in the third five-year period of the 21st century, and shows the future trend of China's reform and development.

A):- Development objectives during the 12th Five-Year Plan period
Considering the trends and conditions of China's development, the Outline sets the main economic and social development objectives for the 12th Five-Year Plan Period. The Outline establishes 24 main targets and classifies them as expectative or restrictive targets. The design of these targets has four prominent features:
1. The Outline combines long-term targets with short-term ones. The plan closely connects the goals and tasks for the 12th Five-Year Plan Period with the main objective of warding off the effect of the global financial crisis and the objective of building a moderate, prosperous society in all respects by 2020 so that we can combine present goals with long-term ones and 5-year goals with 10-year ones.
2. The Outline highlights the weak points and key fields. Facing the need to speed up the transformation of the economic development pattern and to solve prominent contradictions and problems in the economic and social development, the Outline underlines targets in the fields of economic structure, science and technology education, resources and the environment.
3. The Outline gives high priority to ensuring and improving the well-being of the people. There are nine targets concerning people's lives, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the total targets. The importance of people's well-being is highlighted in the full text of the Outline.
4. The Outline stresses the importance of those targets in promoting the transformation of the economic development pattern. Furthermore, the Outline sets 12 restrictive targets in the fields of energy and resources, ecology and environment, the people's livelihood, and lays foundation for scientifically guiding all types of conducts in those fields.

B):- Major tasks and important measures for the 12th Five-Year Plan Period
The Outline makes comprehensive arrangements for economic and social development during the 2011-2015 period and puts forward 14 strategic tasks:
1. To strengthen agriculture, bring more benefits to farmers and speed up the building of a new socialist countryside;
2. To improve the core competitive power of industries through transformation and upgrading;
3. To create environment for the development of service industries;
4. To promote balanced development between regions and healthy development of urbanization through optimizing regional layout;
5. To advocate green development and build energy conserving and environmentally-friendly society;
6. To implement the strategy of reinvigorating the country through human resource development;
7. To improve people's well-being and to establish and improve the basic public service system;
8. To strengthen and make innovations in social administration through seeking both temporary and permanent solutions;
9. To promote vigorous development and prosperity of culture through inheritance and innovations;
10. To tackle difficulties facing reform and to improve the socialist market economic system;
11. To seek mutual benefits and win-win cooperation and improve the work of opening-up to the outside world;
12. To promote democracy and socialist political culture;
13. To build a greater Chinese family through deepening cooperation between different ethnic groups;
14. To promote integrated military and civilian development and to enhance the modernization of the country's national defense and armed forces.

These tasks are to be finished through the following measures:
I):- Continue expanding domestic demand and maintaining steady and rapid economic development
The Outline has firmly grasped the existing strategic opportunity and tried to make full use of it by striving to build a well-off society and enhancing democracy in China. By setting the GDP growth rate at 7 percent for the next five years, the Outline aims at maintaining steady and rapid economic growth and has identified the keys to maintaining this growth rate as expanding domestic demand, especially the long-term mechanism of consumer demand, while further strengthening the country's macro economic control.

II):- Modernize the industrial system and improve the core competence for industries.
These targets embody the crucial means and main content for China's economic restructuring and change of development pattern. They represent the inevitable trends that conform to readjusting international market demand and changing domestic consumption upgrades. They also necessitate the need for the country to raise the qualities and benefits of its economic growth and enhance global competiveness.
The outline has specified the nation's tasks ahead. These include: setting up modern industries with optimized development models and upgraded technologies that are safe and environmentally friendly, that have a relatively high percentage of employment and high added values; coordinating development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries; improving industrial core competence; and improving the overall qualities of industrial development.

III):- Optimize regional development and promote healthy urbanization
Coordinated development of urban and rural areas not only constitutes a long-term mission in China's drive for modernization, but also an urgent task to be accomplished during the next five years.
The Outline has further extended the connotation of coordinated development between different regions and laid stress on the people-oriented policies of narrowing regional disparities, bringing regional advantages into play and promoting rational economic distribution.
The Outline also calls for continued optimization of territorial development and puts forward the task of vigorous and sound urbanization while accelerating construction of a new socialist countryside.

IV):- Building a resource-saving and environmentally friendly society and cultivate sound conservation culture
This goal is concerned with the vital interests of the public as well as the survival and development of the Chinese nation. In addition, it forms an important aspect in the switch of development models and enables more sustainable development in the future. It also constitutes a strategic guarantee for promoting social harmony and building a well-off society.
Bearing in mind the severe restraints of the environment and limited resources, the Outline has prioritized energy conservation and emissions reduction as the key tasks. It will accelerate sustainable development and cultivate sound conservation culture by improving stimulus and restriction mechanisms and formulating more resource-saving and environmentally friendly production and consumption models.

V):- Reinvigorate China through science, technology and education and strengthen the country through human resource development, and build China based on innovation
Increasing creativity and building the country through innovation are the core strategies for enhancing national strength. To switch development models more quickly, China must rely on scientific and technological innovations. These innovations depend heavily on talented people, while education forms the basis for nurturing such talents.
The Outline has identified three mid-term plans as the keys to the development of science and technology, education and human resources. It puts emphasis on strengthening the country through human resource development, raising the level of modern education in China, and inspiring creative thinking and innovation to produce more talented people. With these endeavors, it is hoped that China's economic growth will be more innovation-driven and technology-propelled in the future.

VI):- Strengthen basic public services and ensure and improve people's well-being
To promote scientific development and social harmony, China must ensure and improve the well-being of its people by all means. This also corresponds to people's desire for a better life and is the aim and the outcome of the switch in economic development models.
Paying greater attention to problems related to the vital interests of the people, the Outline puts more emphasis on providing institutional and financial guarantees to resolve those problems, specifying for the first time the range and criteria for basic public services, and drafting action plans to raise people's living standards

VII):- Optimize the socialist economic system and open up the economy for mutual benefit and win-win outcome
Thanks to economic reform and opening, China has been able to achieve such remarkable developmental success. During the 2011-2015 period, economic reform and opening are still the keys to accelerate economic development and to stimulate the scientific development.
The Outline underlines the importance of upper-layer design and general plan, the importance of streamlining the order and key points of reform, and the importance of fully mobilizing the enthusiasm of various sides to press ahead reform with greater resolve and determination, and to strive to make breakthroughs in major areas and key links.

The Outline attaches importance to coordinated domestic development and opening to the outside world. It aims to continuously optimize China's openness by allowing both exports and imports, no just the former, and by allowing foreign investment into China as well as investments overseas, instead of just the former.

The Outline also sets forth the major tasks and guarantee measures regarding the cultural development, socialist political civilization, national defense and the modernization of the army, the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and Macao, the peaceful development of relations with Taiwan and national unification.