China is now in the season of two meetings.

In early March every year, the National People's Congress (NPC) - the national legislature and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) - the national political advisory board - hold their annual meetings.

The two meetings are expected to make a difference this year because the delegates are faced with a new set of tasks.

If participants in the nation's two most important political meetings can hold serious debate on the issues on their 2007 agenda, China can reap double benefits the benefit of having a stronger social program and that of having a more functional democracy.

Through the years of China's reform (a period of almost 30 years), their primary focus has been economic - concerns over building and maintaining the momentum of the nation's development. There were debates, but they were within a general framework. The concern was that the economy was no longer to be run in the old ways. It should move closer to the market and far away from all the unnecessary, if not counterproductive, official meddling.

In recent years, a growing number of issues concerning social development has been brought to the agendas. The public has come to realize the magnitude of these issues since the first alarm was heard after the 2003 outbreak of the deadly epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which revealed the deteriorating conditions of the public health system.

Nowadays, Chinese media can easily list, as many did last week, the top 10 problems affecting social development, sometimes characterized as concerns involving the people's general livelihood.

Since many of the concerns are relatively new to China, it may be hard to find a base of consensus for building solutions. Participants in the two meetings need more time to compare notes, define tasks and propose solutions.

So both bodies have longer agendas and longer meeting times this year. Refreshing discussions can be expected from their debates.

Since everything has an economic side, people can also reasonably anticipate that, in due time, participants of the two meetings will be capable of connecting the issues they now face with their time-tested expertise in transforming the economy.

Most of the issues that the two meetings are going to tackle, inmy opinion, are fundamentally different sides of one core question: how to spread the benefit of the economic reform of the past 30 years to all groups and regions in the country without damaging the economy's strength.

In the most straightforward terms, the core question is whether more money can flow to low-income groups and underdeveloped regions without unlimited government spending.

To do that, whether in developing business or in developing education and health insurance, requires broader participation by people at the grass-root level, especially those with managerial skills. Only a variety of sometimes competing programs run by autonomous local organizations can help China achieve that balance.

Much color has been added to China's economy by the country's small farmers, small merchants, and small factories. But for social programs, including their financing, there still have not been many local small organizations in a nation of 1.3 billion.

Only in the last few months of 2006, for example, was the green light given to rural credit co-ops and township banks. It is hoped that the two meetings of 2007 will create more room for self-organization initiatives everywhere in China.

E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/05/2007 page4)