Wen: Only democracy sustains governance

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-28 09:42
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (L) prepares to chat with Internet surfers on two state news portals in Beijing, China, Feb. 27, 2010. The two portals, the central government website (www.gov.cn) and the Xinhua News Agency website(www.xinhuanet.com), will jointly interview Wen, which will be shown live in both text and video. [Xinhua]
 
Top "livelihood concerns" of Chinese people such as employment, medicare, housing and widening wealth gap were key topics in Premier Wen Jiabao's online chat with netizens on Saturday.
Employment Pressure
China is facing serious challenges in employment, though labor shortage has been found in booming coastal cities recently, Wen said.
He attributed the labor shortage to possible economic recovery, lack of skilled worker and workers' growing awareness of their own rights and interests who would weigh choices for better salaries.
Although the labor shortage in certain areas signals a stabilized and recovering economy, the serious employment situation has not changed in general, Wen said.
"Every year 150 million migrant workers leave their rural homes to seek jobs in cities, 24 million urban unemployed are waiting for jobs, and the number of university graduates will hit a record high of 6.3 million this year, all adding up to the employment pressure," Wen said.
"I hope the employment situation is better than last year," he said.
Wen encouraged university graduates to start their own businesses.
Medicare
Wen said China has started to reform government-run hospitals, the most difficult part of the entire healthcare reform, with maintaining public good as its goal.
Public hospitals in 16 cities have started the reform this year.
China had about 14,000 public hospitals by November 2009. The State Council, or Cabinet, passed a medical reform plan last January which promised to spend 850 billion yuan (123 billion U.S. dollars) by 2011 to provide universal medical service to the country's 1.3 billion population.
Public hospitals in China enjoyed full government funding before 1985. Later, they embarked on a market-oriented reform.
Wen said the situation of hospitals making profit from drug prescriptions would be changed to alleviate high medical costs.
Housing Prices
Housing price hikes have become a top headache for Chinese people. Wen said he was determined to tame the "wild horse" of the country's soaring housing market and to "keep the prices at a reasonable level."
Traditionally in China, an apartment of one's own is a must-have for marriage or a "well-off" life, although the government has tried to encourage people to rent rooms before they can afford to buy one.
Home prices have climbed from year-earlier level since June last year, fueled by record bank lending and favorable tax breaks, with January 2010 posting a 9.5 percent year-on-year growth, the fastest in 19 months.
"I really understand the complaints", Wen said, "housing prices in some cities rise too fast."
To rein in the price hikes, the government has kicked in a series measures, including harsher property sales tax, increasing supply of affordable houses, restraining land purchases, and controlling bank credit.
"In China, huge population with limited land makes people's access to housing a problem", Wen said, adding that the key to solve the problem is to increase housing supply.
The government would also provide support on land, finance and tax to help people buy homes for their own use, and use economic and legal methods to curb property speculation, Wen said.
"It is the government's responsibility to guide the property market", he said, "I am confident that the government would ensure a healthy development of the property market."
Distribution of Social Wealth
Wen said it is the government responsibility to "make the cake of social wealth as big as possible" and the government conscience to "distribute the cake in a fair way."
"It is unfair if a society's wealth is in hands of a small number of people, and in that case, the society must be unstable," he said.
The fair distribution of social wealth concerns social justice, he said.
He called for an increase of the proportion of residents' income in the distribution of national income, and the use of fiscal and taxation instruments to help "the disadvantaged groups."
Wen said the country had about 270 million low-income residents. "We should give care to all of them," he said.
Education
Wen called for changes to education bureaucracy, a problem that plagues China's education development.
He said schools should be run by educationists "who love to teach and know how to teach, and those who have been teachers for life."
China has made a mid- and long-term outline for education reform and development which gives priority to reducing academic workload of students, so that they can develop in an all-around way.
Household Registration
Wen said China would advance the reform of its household registration system to solve problems for new-generation migrant workers.
He said the reform is key to help the country's young rural migrant workers, who have lived and worked in cities for long, to blend into urban society.
Migrant workers have already become a main force of China's industrial forces, Wen said.
Under the current system, migrant workers' registered permanent residences, or "hukou" in Chinese, remain in the countryside, making it hard for them to obtain welfare in urban workplaces.
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