President Xi calls for 'people-centric' reform

China's deepening reforms must be "people-centric" and just, President Xi Jinping said at a meeting of the Leading Group for Overall Reform on Monday.

"A people-centric approach should be implemented in all areas of development, addressing people's demands and concerns, and giving them more tangible benefits," Xi said.

The president, also head of the leading group, was joined at the meeting by deputy heads Li Keqiang, Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli, as well as other senior officials.

The meeting approved a document regulating business operations by family members of officials, a practice which has been extended to Beijing, Guangdong, Chongqing and Xinjiang on the basis of a trial in Shanghai.

Also approved were regulations on management of civil servants, regulations on administration of private schools, and regulations on the protection of judges and prosecutors, among others.

Attendees to the meeting said regulating the business activities of officials' spouses, children and children's spouses is a key effort to comprehensively and strictly govern the Party.

It was agreed at the meeting that dividing public servants into professional and administrative categories will make the management of civil servants more efficient and scientific.

The meeting approved the guidelines on the promotion of family doctors. It was agreed that establishing such a system will move more medical resources to the grassroots level and help achieve the goal of providing basic health services for everyone.

The elderly, patients of chronic diseases and mental health illness, would-be mothers, children, the disabled, among other groups, will be among the first to have their own contracted family doctors, according to the meeting.

The meeting approved the guidelines on speeding up the establishment of a social credit system. The attendees agreed that credit related information should be disclosed and shared across agencies and localities, so that an across-the-board mechanism can be established to punish the discredited and award the credit-worthy.

The meeting approved the guidelines on strengthening the party's presence in private schools, the regulations on the registrations of private schools, and the regulations on the supervision and administration of for-profit private schools.

According to a statement released after the meeting, measures to protect judicial staff while they perform their duties should be strictly enforced. No group or individual should be allowed to request judges or prosecutors do things outside their duties.

"Judges and prosecutors can only be transferred, dismissed or demoted in accordance with legal procedures and based on legal reasons, and acts obstructing judicial activities or harming judicial staff and their next of kin with violence will be severely punished," the statement said.

The statement stressed that the core for supply-side structural reform and the overall reform is innovation and their ultimate goal is to create a new economic growth mechanism, calling for reform measures to push forward the progress in cutting overcapacity, de-stocking, de-leveraging.

While highlighting reforms for state-owned enterprises and the fiscal and taxation system, the statement said reform in social aspects that can improve people's livelihoods must be concretely implemented, citing employment, education, income and health.

"Focusing on people's diversified demands, we should advance reforms that will demand less from the people and give more to them, so that we may improve people's livelihood and relieve their concerns," the statement said.

Source: XINHUA