Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) yesterday acknowledged “great resentment” in China over growing income disparity, corruption and other problems, and vowed his government would work harder to meet public demands.
In a “state of the nation” speech opening the annual 10-day session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), Wen admitted his government had “not yet fundamentally solved a number of issues that the masses feel strongly about.”
These included high consumer and housing prices, “significant problems concerning food safety and rampant corruption,” and people being illegally kicked off their land to make way for unrestrained property development.
China will “effectively solve problems that cause great resentment among the masses,” Wen told nearly 3,000 delegates at the NPC in a two-hour address at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
“We must therefore have a strong sense of responsibility toward the country and the people and work tirelessly and painstakingly to solve these problems more quickly to the satisfaction of the people,” he said.
Topping the agenda is inflation and Wen pledged the communist leadership would step up its fight to contain rising prices of food, housing and other essentials, warning the problem “affects social stability.”
Inflation has remained stubbornly high — 4.9 percent in January — despite a series of policy steps including three interest rate hikes in recent months.
The consumer price index rose by a more than two-year high of 5.1 percent in November.
The premier noted China’s annual 8 percent economic growth target for this year — considered the minimum required to keep the economy growing fast enough to stave off social unrest.
Last year, the economy grew 10.3 percent, but Wen also reiterated a pledge made last Sunday that China would aim for a less frenetic 7 percent annual growth under the new five-year plan.
The premier vowed yesterday that China would continue building a “powerful” military, one day after Beijing announced a return to double-digit percentage hikes in defence spending.
A spokesman for the National People’s Congress said on Friday that China’s defence budget would rise 12.7 percent in 2011 to 601.1 billion yuan (US$91.7 billion).
The PLA — the world’s largest military force -- is hugely secretive about its defence programmes, but insists its modernization is aimed purely at defence of China’s vast land and sea borders.
“This will not pose a threat to any country,” Li Zhaoxing (李肇星), the parliament spokesman — and a former foreign minister — said in announcing the budget.
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