New Governors Take Office

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, January 19, 2003

New Governors Take Office

A new team of younger and better-educated provincial leaders have been elected at annual legislative meetings, which continued across the nation on Friday.

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A new team of younger and better-educated provincial leaders have been elected at annual legislative meetings, which continued across the nation on Friday.

The new provincial leaders have been charged with the task of steering their local economic and social programmes over the coming five years.

Governors already elected are Lu Hao of Northwest China's Gansu Province, Zhao Leji of Northwest China's Qinghai Province and Lu Zhangong of East China's Fujian Province.

Other provincial legislatures will follow suit in the next few days, voting for new leaderships during the annual congresses.

Members of provincial and municipal people's congresses also gathered to address issues including how to strengthen the fledging social security network in Beijing and eradicate poverty and develop the local economy in South China's Hainan Province.

The Beijing municipal government will plough 4.1 billion yuan (US$496 million) into its social security system this year and will create 200,000 more jobs, while keeping the urban unemployment rate within 2.5 per cent, Mayor Liu Qi told the 12th Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

Job advice centres around the city will improve their services to laid-off workers, providing advice on finding jobs, free job training and recommended job vacancies.

They will also develop a new range of services, including expanding job vacancies in communities and providing low-interest and long-term loans to encourage self-employment, according a work report from the Beijing Labour and Social Security Bureau delivered to the congress.

Over the past five years, a total of 1,067 re-employment centres were set up, which helped nearly 850,000 laid-off workers find new jobs.

The city's re-employment rate remained at more than 60 per cent and the registered unemployed rate stayed below 2 per cent, according to the report.

The living conditions of poverty-stricken Beijinger continued to improve over the past five years. The minimum standard of living in urban areas increased to 290 yuan (US$35) from 170 yuan (US$21) a month, and the minimum monthly income also rose to 465 yuan (US$56) from the previous figure of 270 yuan (US$33).

The medical, endowment and unemployment social insurance system was also greatly improved, according to the bureau.

By the end of last year, more than 3.5 million workers and staff members had signed up to medical insurance schemes, and over 4.3 million people took out endowment insurance policies, 1.3 million of whom are retired people. Retired people can receive a monthly subsidy of 819 yuan to 1,600 yuan (US$99 to US$193), said the bureau.

In spite of the advancement the capital has made in the course of social security, some local political advisers urged further improvements, especially a wider coverage of the system.

Rural economist Liu Zhiren, a member of the Beijing Municipal Political Consultative Conference, said that more attention ought to be paid to farmers-turned-urban residents, to ensure they are also covered by the social security system.

``Those former farmers have lost their land to the expansion of urban Beijing, and most of their compensation has been used for resettlement,'' said Liu.

``Now that most of them have a tough time finding permanent jobs, it is up to local government to give them greater assistance.''

Liu believed the problem was especially severe for growing cities like Beijing, with more farmers joining the growing, yet insecure, ranks of new urban residents, with no one providing them a guaranteed income.

Social security, which is essentially a guaranteed income provided by society to its members, has also attracted much attention from central government.

Premier Zhu Rongji told a recent State Council work conference on a pilot social security scheme in Northeast China's Liaoning Province that the completion of social security is essential for social stability and further healthy economic development.

Experiences gained from the Liaoning pilot, which includes having universal government administration of pension and employment insurance to ensure every person in need to gets proper money on time, should be spread, he said.

The annual growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) in South China's Hainan Province is expected to be 9 per cent in the next five years.

That was the message from acting governor Wang Xiaofeng, who delivered a working report on Thursday to the first conference of the Third Hainan Provincial People's Congress.

Wang said the province achieved a GDP of 62.3 billion yuan (US$7.5 billion) last year, up 9.2 per cent from 2001.

Hainan's fiscal income will continue to grow by over 10 per cent annually in the next five years while the province last year got a fiscal income of 5.2 billion yuan (US$629 million).

Investment in fixed assets will total 150 billion yuan (US$18 billion) within the next five years, Wang said. Such investment in the past five years was 99.8 billion yuan (US$12 billion).

With further economic development, Hainan residents' standard of living will also improve, he said.

The province will continue to devise and implement policies and measures that help improve employment and re-employment prospects, he said, adding that the unemployment rate in cities and townships will be kept below 4.5 per cent.

In the past five years, the province has helped sell and rent 2.36 million square metres of commercial houses that had been overstocked, accounting for 54.4 per cent of all the overstocked houses in the province.

Reform of State-owned enterprises (SOE) has been deepening over the past five years, Wang said.

A total of 33 programmes for mergers, bankruptcy and debt-to-equity have been implemented, which helped the targeted enterprises shake off more than 4 billion yuan (US$484 million) of debts.

The province increased its infrastructure investment. To date, 70 per cent of the cities and counties in the province have been connected by freeways.

Electricity is available in each and every township and 98 per cent of the villages in the province, while the price of electricity in rural areas experienced a decrease of 50.3 per cent.

In the past five years the province attracted US$4.13 billion and saw an export volume of over US$4.06 billion.

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