Second, we supported the development of education. Government spending on
education in 2006 totaled 475.27 billion yuan, up 19.6% compared to the figure
for 2005, representing 103.8% of the budgeted figure. The central government's
contribution to this amount was 53.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year rise of 39.4%.
In addition to giving priority to rural compulsory education, we also launched
an initiative to build national vocational colleges as a showcase for vocational
higher education and to support the efforts to build hands-on training centers
for these colleges. We continued to support the implementation of the May 1998
Project to improve the quality of education in universities. We improved the
system of financial assistance policies consisting of government student loans,
grants and scholarships as the main forms of aid for students of colleges and
secondary vocational schools from financially strapped families to help them
complete their education.
Third, we supported the development of public health. Budget allocations from
governments at all levels for medical care and public health in 2006 reached
131.158 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.5%, or 110.7% of the
budgeted figure. Of this amount, 13.8 billion yuan was from the central budget,
up 65.4%. The increased spending was mainly used to finance public health
programs such as prevention and control of major communicable and endemic
diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and snail fever, to help pay the medical bills
of poor women having babies in hospital, to equip and staff community health
centers and rural health clinics and to fund the placement of a large number of
doctors to rural areas to help develop local healthcare systems.
Fourth, we supported innovation in science and technology. In2006 we set up a
system for ensuring stable growth of government funding for science and
technology, and central and local governments spent 126.038 billion yuan on
science and technology, a year-on-year rise of 26.2%, or 110.2% of the budgeted
figure. Of this amount, allocations from the central budget totaled 77.4 billion
yuan, up 29.2%. We further improved the structure of this funding by increasing
spending on basic research, on applied research, and for nonprofit research
institutes. We encouraged independent innovation in enterprises by creating a
system of incentives and by adopting preferential fiscal and tax policies toward
innovative enterprises such as granting tax breaks and awarding government
procurement contracts.
Fifth, we supported the development of public cultural programs as well as
the culture industry. Expenditures of governments at all levels on culture,
sports and radio in 2006 amounted to 83.453 billion yuan, 18.6% more than the
previous year, or 108.5% of the budgeted figure. Of this amount, allocations
from the central government totaled 12.3 billion yuan, up 23.9%. These
expenditures were mainly used to proceed with the reform of the cultural
management system and also improve the system of public cultural services. The
focus of this spending was on funding efforts to extend radio and TV coverage to
every village, to bring digital film projection to the countryside, to share
cultural information across the country, to reward and assist some rural
families that observe the family planning policy and to carry out the "fewer
children equals faster prosperity" project in the western region.
Sixth, we supported ecological improvement and environmental protection. We
improved the policy on the virgin forest protection program. We adjusted the
follow-up policies on returning cultivated land to forests and improved the
system to fund ecological conservation in forests. We supported the pilot reform
of the management system of state forestry farms and the ownership system of
state forests. Government funds were allocated to fund efforts to reforest
266,667 hectares of farmland and return 10 million hectares of grazing land to
grassland in 2006. We pressed ahead with a reform to introduce a system of
royalties paid to the government by coalmining companies. This pilot reform has
been carried out throughout eight provincial-level localities, beginning in
2006. These measures indicate that China's social undertakings are in a new
period of rapid development.
