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4. Transforming and upgrading the real economy through innovation
The real economy has always been the foundation of China's development; the task we now face is to speed up its transformation and upgrading. We will do more to implement the strategy of innovation-driven development, upgrade the structure of the real economy, and improve its performance and competitiveness.
We will strengthen our capability for making technological innovations.
We will improve mechanisms for providing continued long-term support for fundamental research and original research, build major national infrastructure projects for science and technology and set up technological innovation hubs, and establish platforms for sharing R&D resources.
We will continue piloting reforms for all-around innovation. We will reform the system for assessing scientific and technological achievements. We will see our universities and research institutes truly operate with autonomy, ensure that incentive policies like stocks, options, and dividends are implemented, and implement the reform of the systems for managing research funding and projects. These steps should keep our scientists and engineers from being distracted and allow them to focus on their research.
We will begin piloting reforms to conduct integrated management of intellectual property rights and improve the system for creating, protecting, and applying intellectual property rights.
We will deepen reform of China's systems for cultivating talent and introduce more effective policies for bringing in talent from overseas. By welcoming the world's brightest minds to China and fully motivating our scientists and engineers, we will use innovation to accomplish great things.
We will accelerate the development of emerging industries.
We will fully implement our plan for developing strategic emerging industries. We will accelerate R&D on and commercialization of new materials, new energy, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, bio-pharmacy, 5G mobile communications, and other technologies, and develop industrial clusters in these fields. We will continue to support and guide the development of the sharing economy to enable greater efficiency in the use of resources and bring greater convenience to our people. We will formulate regulatory rules for emerging industries in keeping with the principle of encouraging innovation and conducting regulation in a tolerant and prudent way, and guide and promote the healthy development of emerging industries. We will deepen reform of the statistics management system and improve statistics on emerging industries.
In the age of the Internet, faster, safer, and more cost-effective information networks are crucial to the development of every sector. This year, we will do more to increase broadband speed and lower rates for Internet services. Mobile rates for domestic roaming and long-distance calls will be cancelled; rates for broadband services for small and medium enterprises will be slashed; and rates for international calls will be lowered. We will push forward with the Internet Plus action plan and speed up the development of the digital economy. I am confident that all these steps will benefit both businesses and our people.
We will endeavor to transform and upgrade traditional industries.
We will intensify efforts to implement the Made in China 2025 initiative, promote accelerated application of big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, and use new technologies, new forms of business, and new models to bring about transformation in the production, management, and marketing models of traditional industries.
With the development of smart manufacturing as our focus, we will press ahead with building national smart manufacturing demonstration zones and manufacturing innovation centers. We will work hard on the implementation of projects to build a robust foundation for industrial development and projects to develop and make major equipment, and we will make a big push to develop advanced manufacturing, thus moving toward mid- and high-end manufacturing. We will improve policies designed to turn China into a manufacturer of quality, and we will adopt a variety of supportive measures for technological upgrading and re-energize traditional industries.
We will continue to encourage people to start businesses and make innovations.
Our policy of encouraging people to start businesses and innovate is an effective way of creating jobs through business startups and innovation; it is an important source of strength that fosters new growth drivers to replace old ones and that upgrades the economic structure; and it is an effective channel for promoting equal opportunity and facilitating vertical social mobility. We must keep on pushing hard with this policy.
We will establish more entrepreneurship and innovation demonstration centers; we will encourage large enterprises, research institutes, and universities to establish specialized spaces for crowd innovation; we will strengthen support for innovative medium, small and micro businesses; and we will develop a full range of services that are accessible to the general public for the entire business startup and innovation process. All this should help entities to fully exploit their own strengths and interact both on- and off-line, and see small enterprises burgeoning nationwide, large enterprises growing mighty, and market dynamism and social creativity being fully unleashed.
We will take comprehensive steps to improve product quality.
We will take a broad range of actions to raise quality, strengthening all-around quality management, building firm technological foundations for product quality, tightening quality oversight, and improving the competitive mechanism that links a firm's fate in business to the quality of its products. Quality is born of workmanship. We will promote workmanship and foster a culture of workmanship where workers have a strong work ethic and tirelessly seek improvement. We will refine our incentive mechanisms and see great numbers of Chinese workers exemplify workmanship and more Chinese brands enjoy international recognition. We will usher in an era of quality for economic development in China.
5. Promoting steady development of agriculture and continued increases in rural incomes
We will do more to advance supply-side structural reform in agriculture, improve policies to boost agriculture and benefit farmers, and create more channels for rural residents to find employment and increase their incomes. We will ensure China's food security, see that agricultural modernization and new urbanization reinforce each other, and speed up efforts to foster new drivers powering agricultural and rural development.
We will push forward with structural adjustment in agriculture.
We will guide farmers in responding to market demand, increasing the supply of quality green agricultural products and the production of quality rice and wheat, and making appropriate reductions to the amount of land devoted to growing corn. We will expand trials to replace grain crop with feed crop cultivation to cover over 667,000 hectares. We will encourage the use of multiple channels to reduce excess stockpiles of corn. We will support major agricultural production areas in developing intensive processing of agricultural products, develop farm-based recreation or agritourism, extend industry chains and value chains, and step up the integrated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas.
We will boost the development of modern agriculture.
We will work faster to see due standards are followed in agricultural production, and promote the development and protection of brand name agricultural products. We will create functional zones for grain production, major agricultural product protection areas, areas for growing quality and distinctively local agricultural products, and modern agriculture industrial parks. We will continue to improve rural land, upgrade low- and medium-yield cropland, and spread dry-farming techniques, adding 1.33 million hectares of farmland under highly water-efficient irrigation. We will strengthen the protection of cultivated land and improve work to offset cultivated land used for other purposes.
Developing appropriately scaled, diversified farming operations is vital for Chinese-style agricultural modernization, and these operations need to be covered by agricultural insurance. This year, in selected counties and county-level cities in 13 major grain-producing provinces, we will provide catastrophe insurance for farmers engaging in appropriately scaled farming operations. We will channel a portion of budgetary disaster relief funds into this initiative and expand the coverage and raise the benefits of the insurance scheme. We will improve the agricultural reinsurance system. We wish to use sustainable and sound agricultural insurance schemes to drive the development of modern agriculture.
We will deepen rural reforms.
We will take steady steps to reform the rural collective property rights system and deepen the pilot reform of the rural land system to see our farmers are granted more property rights.
We will improve pricing mechanisms for grain and other important agricultural products as well as the system for their purchase and storage. We will carry out comprehensive reform of the pricing for water used in agriculture. We will deepen reforms related to collective forest tenure, state forestry areas and farms, state-owned farms, and rural supply and marketing cooperatives. We will strengthen the development of rural community-level organizations. We will improve the mechanisms for encouraging business startups and innovation in rural areas, train more professional farmers of new kinds, support migrant workers in starting businesses in their hometowns and villages, and take further measures to encourage college graduates, demobilized military personnel, and scientists and engineers to work in rural areas.
We will step up the development of public facilities in rural areas.
A total of 200,000 kilometers of roads will be upgraded or built in rural areas. We will see that all rural areas have a steady and reliable supply of power and that all electric pumpsets on rural flatlands are connected. Fiber-optic broadband will be extended to 30,000 administrative villages. We will increase water supply to better ensure access to safe drinking water. We will intensify efforts to renovate dilapidated houses and improve rural living environments. Our goal is to develop rural China into a place where people can enjoy both the beauty of the countryside and the conveniences of modern living.
6. Actively expanding China's opening up to the world
Faced with new changes in the international environment and the new requirements of China's development, we need to further refine our strategic plan for opening up, work faster to build new systems for an open economy, and drive China toward both deeper and higher level opening up.
We will make solid efforts to pursue the Belt and Road Initiative.
Guided by the principle of achieving shared growth through consultation and collaboration, we will accelerate the building of overland economic corridors and maritime cooperation hubs, and establish cooperative mechanisms for achieving compatibility in customs clearance procedures along the routes. We will deepen international industrial-capacity cooperation, promoting the export of Chinese equipment, technologies, standards, and services, to see that China and other countries are able to draw on each other's strengths. We will strengthen personal and cultural exchanges and cooperation in education, science and technology, culture, healthcare, and tourism. We will see that in holding the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation we offer a meeting of real quality, opening the page on a great new chapter of mutually beneficial cooperation.
We will ensure that foreign trade continues to pick up and register steady growth.
We will implement and improve our import and export policies and optimize imports and exports. We will expand the coverage of export credit insurance and provide export financing insurance for all insurable complete sets of large equipment. We will move ahead with trials to develop services trade through innovation and establish a seed fund to encourage innovation to develop services trade.
We will support the development of market procurement trade and integrated foreign trade service firms. We will accelerate the development of demonstration centers for transforming and upgrading foreign trade. We will facilitate the extension of processing trade to the medium-high end of industrial chains and its relocation to central and western regions.
We will extend the practice of processing international trade through a single window, and achieve nationwide integration of customs clearance procedures. The import of advanced technologies, equipment, and important parts and components will be increased to promote the balanced growth of foreign trade and accelerate industrial upgrading in China.
We will make big moves to improve the environment for foreign investors.
We will revise the catalog of industries open to foreign investment, and make service industries, manufacturing, and mining more open to foreign investment. We will encourage foreign-invested firms to be listed and issue bonds in China and allow them to take part in national science and technology projects. Foreign firms will be treated the same as domestic firms when it comes to license applications, standards-setting, and government procurement, and will enjoy the same preferential policies under the Made in China 2025 initiative.
Local governments can, within the scope of the powers granted them by law, adopt preferential policies to attract foreign investment. We will build 11 high-standard pilot free trade zones, and widely spread practices developed in these zones that are proven to work. We will guide the sound and standardized development of Chinese overseas investment, and increase the ability of Chinese companies to hedge against risks. China's door is going to keep on opening wider, and China will keep working to be the most attractive destination for foreign investment.
We will promote the liberalization and facilitation of international trade and investment.
Economic globalization is in the fundamental interests of all countries. China will not shift in its commitment to promoting global economic cooperation, will uphold the multilateral trading regime as the main channel of international trade, and will play an active part in multilateral trade negotiations. China is ready to join hands with the other countries involved to fully put into force and implement the Protocol to Amend the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation between China and ASEAN, to conclude talks as soon as possible for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, and to advance the development of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. We will continue to negotiate investment and trade agreements with relevant countries and regions.
China is a responsible country. We have always striven to honor the commitments we have made, and we will firmly defend our due rights and interests.
