Furthering Reform and Innovation and Boosting Our Ability to Deliver High-Quality Development of Civil Affairs

President Xi Jinping has pointed out that comprehensively furthering reform bears on the future of our Party and people as well as our Party's governance foundation and position, and that the unwavering goal of reform must be to promote social fairness and justice and to improve the wellbeing of the people. We must, therefore, strive to eliminate entrenched obstacles within mechanisms and systems and speed up the pace of institutional innovation in areas relating to public wellbeing. On this basis, President Xi has put forward important requirements for furthering reform and innovation in the civil affairs sector.

To address the underdevelopment of service facilities, we must coordinate the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and the 102 specific major projects therein. Working in collaboration with the National Development and Reform Commission, we will devise and execute central budgetary investment plans for projects to proactively respond to population aging, develop childcare facilities, and establish social service facilities for meeting people's basic needs. We will expedite the implementation of projects in the 14th Five-Year Plan that aim to fill gaps in the availability of funeral homes and mental health welfare facilities.

To address the lagging development of the rule of law within the civil affairs sector, we must push forward legislation in critical and urgent areas. We will work to advance the revision of the Charity Law and the drafting of the Social Assistance Law. We will accelerate the process of revising the Registration Measures for the Adoption of Children by Chinese Citizens and move forward with the formulation of departmental regulations, including the Implementation Measures for the Regulations on the Administration of Place Names and the Administrative Measures for the Names of Social Organizations. 

To address the ineffective implementation of some decisions and plans, work inspection mechanisms will be bolstered. We must ensure that all major decisions and plans are fully implemented and yield the intended outcomes. To tackle the issue of inadequate supporting services for the development of civil affairs, we must make a coordinated push for progress in a range of areas. This includes news and communication, information technology development, policy and theoretical research, vocational education, training, scientific and technological research and application, and statistics and studies. We will also strengthen the management of both civil affairs agencies and directly affiliated organizations at all levels. These steps will ensure stronger support for the development of civil affairs programs. To shore up weaknesses in civil affairs capacity at the community level, we will guide the development of civil affairs teams in townships and urban subdistricts and organize capacity-building activities.

Editor : Jiang Wenyan