How the 13th Five-Year Plan Draws the Blueprint for Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects

“The 13th Five-Year Plan” period is an important “window of opportunity” for China's economic transformation and upgrading. The key to achieving the goal of a moderately prosperous society in all respects lies in the “13th Five-Year Plan,” and the key to building an innovative country also lies in the “13th Five-Year Plan.”

At this year's National Two Sessions, Yu Zhengsheng, Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said in his work report that in 2015 the National Committee of the CPPCC will closely follow reform and development in offering suggestions and strategies, and will make deliberating and offering suggestions on the formulation of the “13th Five-Year Plan” for national economic and social development the focus of its work for the whole year.

During the National Two Sessions, reporters from “China Economic Weekly” interviewed a number of CPPCC members, who offered suggestions and strategies for the “13th Five-Year Plan” from multiple fields including science and technology, agriculture, finance, transportation, environmental protection, and the service industry.

Qi Rang, Deputy Director of the Committee on Population, Resources and Environment of the National Committee of the CPPCC and Director of the Decision-Making Consultation Special Committee of the China Association for Science and Technology:

Include the indicator that “citizens possess basic scientific literacy” in the “13th Five-Year Plan”

The 18th National Congress proposed implementing the innovation-driven development strategy, the core of which is to promote the close integration of scientific and technological innovation with economic and social development, the key of which is to enhance independent innovation capacity, and the foundation of which is to raise the level of scientific literacy of the whole people.

In August 2014, led by me, members of the National Committee of the CPPCC from the science and technology sector conducted research around “implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and offering suggestions and strategies for the ‘13th Five-Year Plan.’” The research found that at present many problems remain in implementing the innovation-driven development strategy. The most prominent manifestations are that the implementation of scientific literacy for the whole people is unevenly developed; the proportion of scientific and technological resource allocation is unbalanced, especially the proportion of investment in basic research is too low, and the capacity for original innovation is weak.

The Central Committee of the Party and the State Council issued the “Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Science and Technology System and Accelerating the Construction of the National Innovation System” in September 2012, clearly requiring that by 2015, “the proportion of our citizens possessing basic scientific literacy exceed 5%.” This goal should be achievable.

So-called citizens possessing basic scientific literacy means understanding necessary scientific and technological knowledge, mastering basic scientific methods, establishing scientific thinking, advocating the scientific spirit, and having a certain ability to make scientific judgments and handle practical problems and participate in public affairs.

For example, in recent years, under the premise that China faces large imports of PX, during the construction of PX projects in some places, because the public firmly believed that “PX is highly toxic” and for other reasons, multiple large-scale mass incidents occurred in succession, falling into the awkward situation of “stopping as soon as there is a protest,” bringing huge losses to the country. The construction of nuclear power plants, waste-to-energy incineration projects, and others all face similar situations. Another example is that in 2011 an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 occurred in Japan and triggered a nuclear leak, and China unexpectedly set off a shocking wave of panic buying of salt. The substantive problem reflected by these phenomena is that the scientific literacy of our citizens needs to be improved.

Therefore, we suggest including in the “13th Five-Year Plan” the indicator that the proportion of citizens possessing basic scientific literacy exceed 10% by 2020, and including the implementation of the outline for scientific literacy for the whole people and the completion of the goals for building citizens' scientific literacy in the performance assessments of relevant departments and local governments.

In addition to raising citizens' basic scientific literacy, increasing funding for basic research is also very important. By 2020, we must build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and enter the ranks of innovative countries. With so many goals to accomplish, basic research is the source. The key to improving original innovation capacity lies in basic research. Our country's scientific research funding has also been increasing year after year, but the proportion of basic research funding in total social research and experimental development funding has basically hovered around 5%. In developed countries, however, this figure is generally above 15%. If this proportion cannot rise, our innovation will lack staying power.

It is suggested that the central government increase funding for basic, strategic, and frontier basic research, and on the basis of existing investment, gradually increase research funding by one percentage point each year, reaching more than 10% of total social research and experimental development funding by 2020.

Dai Gongxing, member of the National Committee of the CPPCC and President of the China Cotton Association:

Without government support, rural finance is just empty talk

During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, it is an important period for comprehensively deepening rural reform and promoting the transformation of traditional agriculture into modern agriculture. To complete the transformation and upgrading of agriculture, it is necessary to accelerate the construction of a new agricultural operation system, and in this system, the most important thing is to cultivate and build new agricultural operation entities, encourage the development of various forms of farmer cooperation such as specialized large households, family farms, specialized cooperatives, and leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization, and at the same time encourage industrial and commercial capital to go to the countryside to develop modern agriculture.

In this process, top-level design and policy guidance need to be strengthened, and it must be carried out actively and in a standardized and orderly manner.

In building an agricultural socialized service system, financial services are extremely important. For many years, calls to solve the problem of rural financial services have been endless, but the situation has not been effectively improved. The rural credit cooperatives and other financial institutions that originally served rural areas have already moved into cities and transformed into commercial financial institutions; other agriculture-related financial organizations also find it difficult to provide effective services to farmers due to various reasons such as business objectives, including operating outlets.

To solve rural financial services, I believe that on the one hand we must rely on formal finance and strive to establish a financial support system serving rural areas, including banks, trust guarantees, leasing, insurance, futures, agricultural industry funds, and so on; on the other hand, we must support the development of rural cooperative finance. There is also a key point: solving rural finance must have government intervention and support, including tax reductions and exemptions, interest subsidy policies, risk compensation mechanisms, and so on. Otherwise, solving rural financial services will ultimately be just empty talk.

In order to adapt to the new requirements of building a new agricultural operation system and realizing agricultural modernization, it is necessary to reconstruct the government's support system for agriculture and, on the basis of continuous improvement, safeguard it through legislation by the people's congress. At present, it is necessary to reform the past method of “distributing money in a scattered way,” coordinate and merge various agriculture-related funds, and make promoting the development of new operation entities and appropriately scaled operations the focus of fiscal expenditure supporting agriculture. It is necessary to give play to the guiding role of fiscal funds and drive more social funds into investment.

China's agricultural modernization must be realized by generation after generation of new-type farmers, so the cultivation of people must be placed in an important position. A portion of the fiscal funds used to support agriculture must be arranged for expenditure in this regard. First, vigorously implement the new-type farmer science and technology training project, and train specialized farmers around leading industries and characteristic industries. Second, focus on strengthening the cultivation of new agricultural operation entities, such as specialized large households, family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and other agricultural operation backbones, so that they become new-type farmers who understand technology, understand management, and have vision.