Put People First and Build a Harmonious Society in China

----by Press office of the Chinese Embassy

A harmonious society in China is a society that always puts people first. This is the aim and focus of all that China has been doing in essence in her modernization drive over the past 60 years ever since the founding of New China in 1949.

Mr. Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China, has called in recent years for the whole Chinese people to make double efforts in "building a harmonious society" in China, a goal which has been placed on top of the agenda of the Chinese government.

The call has immediately embraced by the whole Chinese people with 56 ethnic groups living in this vast motherland for thousand years and striving for prosperity and happy life. Since China started its reform and opening-up in 1978, profound achievements have be obtained in economic and social development. Globalization and information technology have been spreading fast in the world, bringing unprecedented new opportunities and challenges. Society in China is also experiencing profound changes. People have more time to make themselves a prettier village, a better city, a cleaner river or a greener hill.

A harmonious society in China means a society with, for instance, a stable political environment, a sustainable prosperity, people living in peace with fair opportunities for work or study, and a society of better welfare.

Many programs are hence introduced with more resources from both public and private sectors in a bid to help communities improve infrastructure, enhance education and job training, strengthen medical care and clean streets and waters. The gap between rich and poor draws great attention and efforts are being made to narrow it sooner and faster. The slogan is to provide people with opportunities full and fair to benefit on the development of national economy.

It is a timely strengthening of the efforts. Along with more than three decades of reform and opening-up, people's living conditions have been improved and the population of the poor has decreased by a large number. Job opportunities have increased and many structural problems of the old system are being solved. The whole society featuring rules of law and respect of human rights is being enhanced. However, problems remain and new challenges are emerging, such as gaps in income, increasingly serious state of underdevelopment facing rural areas in farmers and agriculture, the drainage of farmland, heavy pressure in the workplace or an incomplete social security system. The building of a harmonious society aims to co-ordinate and streamline the relationships between different social sectors, to ensure that the economy develop in a sustained and stable way.

In order to build a harmonious society, the Chinese government and its people are enhancing efforts in maintaining world peace and promoting common development by expanding friendly relations and mutual beneficial cooperation. More attention is to be paid to playing active role in deepening cooperation between China and other countries around the world, including those in the Gulf region. We have advocated with joint efforts of peoples in the world to build the world into a harmonious one of last peace and common prosperity.

Domestically, China will continue to push forward our reform and opening up, and to expand our participation in global economy by integrating our development with the rest of the world on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. We in China call this policy as keeping on road of peaceful development and building with joint efforts of peoples of all countries this world into a harmonious one of lasting peace and common prosperity. We welcome more participation of our partners aboard, Qatar included, in our national economic and social development.

As economy grows, growth of social wealth should benefit people of the whole society for a better and happier life. While we try to make the cake of economy bigger, we should also distribute the in a fair and just way. We need to build a stronger and more prosperous nation, and also a responsible citizenship and compassionate society. Income gap is to be narrowed and poverty reduced or even eliminated.

In such a society people live in harmony with mutual respect and governed by rules of law. Labor, knowledge, technology and capital are all factors of wealth creation, each and every factor play its indispensible role in wealth creation, in which earnest job gets earnest pay. A harmonious society should see honest, friendly and harmonious relationships among citizens and just, fair and open economic competition.

This society advocates what Chinese people called "Scientific Development Concept" (SDC), an approach in favor of an overall, coordinated and sustainable way in the economic development, making the interests of different social sectors balanced. In this effort, China is and will continue to attach extra importance to the relationship between humanity and nature, protecting natural resources, reducing pollution and make and raising the quality of our environment. A harmonious society is an economically sound, environment and climate friendly one.

A great strategy of improving education and science is being implemented. There are unprecedented freedom for academic and science research with fresh investments. The Chinese central government has for instance attached more importance to compulsory education. It has carried out programs of fee exemptions and subsidies for students in 592 counties under poverty line in 2007 alone in the national poverty-relief program. Similar plans are under consideration to extend the efforts to poor families in urban areas.

Building a harmonious society calls for a long time endeavor, yet it can and should be done. It is happening in China.