--Creation of at least nine million new jobs for urban residents with urban registered unemployment under 4.6%. Although the employment situation will present a fair amount of difficulty this year, with hard work, coupled with sustained rapid economic growth and more results produced by government policies to promote employment, it will be possible for us to reach these targets.

--Increase in both per capita disposable income of urban residents and per capita net income of rural residents of 6% in real terms, and increase in retail sales of consumer goods of 12%. Factors that will contribute to a steady rise in urban and rural incomes include improved national financial strength, better enterprise performance, deepened reform of the income distribution system and the implementation of measures such as the building of a new socialist countryside, efforts to increase rural incomes, strengthening of the social safety net and poverty alleviation programs. However, achieving this year's targets will still require an enormous amount of effort because we still need to overcome many difficulties and restraints in order to increase the incomes of rural residents and low-income urban residents.

--Rise in the consumer price index under 3%. The major considerations behind this target are: proactive yet prudent price reform for resource products, adjustments in the prices of public goods and services and the aftereffects of last year's year-end rises in the prices of grain, edible oil and other farm and sideline products, all of which will tend to drive up the price level to a certain extent.

--Continued progress in science and technology, education, health, culture and other social programs. The ratio of research and development expenditures compared to GDP is expected to increase to 1.56%. The secondary gross enrollment ratio should reach 65%, and plans call for enrolling 5.67 million undergraduate students and 424,000 graduate students in regular institutions of higher learning. The system of public cultural services will be strengthened. Trials of the new rural cooperative medical care system will be expanded to cover at least 80% of all counties (county-level cities and districts). The natural population growth rate should stay under 7.5‰.

--Improvement in the balance of payments. Because the current international environment should remain favorable overall, and domestic enterprises and their products are becoming more competitive, growth in exports should remain strong. There should be a reasonable increase in the scale of imports as a result of the end of the transition period for China's WTO entry coupled with policies to encourage imports and the service trade, which should hold down the excessive rate of increase in the trade surplus to a certain extent.

III. Major Tasks and Measures for Economic and Social Development in 2007

To reach this year's targets for economic and social development, we must make unified overall plans and focus on key areas. We need to pay particular attention to the following eight aspects of our work.

1. We will continue improving macroeconomic regulation and maintain stable economic performance.

We need to continue to follow prudent fiscal and monetary policies.

1) We need to reduce the central government budget deficit by an appropriate amount and continue to adjust the structure of expenditures. The deficit in the central government budget for 2007 is projected to be 245 billion yuan, 50 billion yuan less than last year. We need to make proper arrangements for any revenue in excess of the projected figure. We will vigorously work to increase revenue and reduce expenditures and improve the performance of budgetary funds.