New stage for people's economic and social rights

In general, China has experienced three different stages in promoting and guaranteeing its citizens' economic and social rights; with the first stage starting from the founding of the new China in 1949 to the initiation of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, during which the government took active measures to boost people's economic and social rights.

Due to the low level of economic development at that time, the government had to directly produce, provide and distribute related materials and services to meet people's basic economic and social needs.

The introduction of the reform and opening-up policy marked the start of the second stage in advancing people's economic and social rights, during which the government paid more respect to individuals' self-determination of their economic and social rights along with its efforts to build and develop a socialist market economy, and it extended to people a bigger space in which to exercise their right of self-determination. For example, people were given more freedom to choose their own jobs and hospitals for medical treatment. Citizens were also allowed to freely choose different types of commercial insurance.

China's fast economic development in recent years has made it increasingly difficult for its previous inputs to meet people's diversified and ever-expanding economic and social rights. The ever-widening income gap also indicates that dependence on the market is unable to meet people's actual economic and social demands. In particular, those in a disadvantageous position need more sound policy guarantees from the government to realize their economic and social rights. All these factors have led to some changes in the country's strategy of guaranteeing people's economic and social rights. While fully respecting people's right to self-determination, the country has also taken more effective measures, such as an increased input of manpower, material and fiscal resources, to ensure their economic and various social rights are guaranteed.

In a bid to narrow the income gap between urban and rural residents in the new stage, the government vowed to change the status quo in which the growth of household incomes lags behind government fiscal revenues and to lift people's incomes at the same pace as national economic growth. In 2013, the country's average household disposable income grew one percentage point more than the country's gross domestic product after deducting the factor of inflation. At the same time, the growth rate of the average disposable income among rural residents was 2.3 percentage points more than that of urban residents.