Meeting highlights key role of reform in tackling challenges

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, highlighted on Tuesday the importance of furthering reform to help the nation tackle changing situations and create new opportunities, while seeing that reform can deliver substantial outcomes.

In remarks delivered at the 14th meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform, Xi, who is the head of the committee, said the pioneering role of reform in forcing breakthroughs must be amplified so that China can attain its main targets set for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), win a decisive battle against poverty and build a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

In planning reform during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the country must give more emphasis to institutional and governance system development and solve more underlying problems at the institutional level, said a statement released after the meeting.

The largest source of vitality for reform and innovation lies in the grassroots level and the people, and it is important to better encourage and guide new things and practices to enable their healthy development and see that new growth engines become even stronger at a quicker pace, the statement said.

The meeting heard a report on the progress of reform in the medicine and healthcare system since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November 2013.

China's medicine and healthcare system has withstood the test of the COVID-19 pandemic and played an important role in the battle to contain the contagion, the statement said.

The meeting called for quicker steps to refine the tiered system for diagnosis and treatment, improve the coordination mechanism between hospitals and disease prevention and control centers and deepen reform at public hospitals.

It also urged efforts to deepen reform in medical insurance payment methods, bolster oversight of medical insurance funds and strengthen grassroots-level healthcare institutions.

The country must give high priority to the use of new information technology in the medicine and healthcare sectors, reshape the sectors' management and service models, refine the allocation of resources and improve the efficiency of services, the statement said.

In light of the prominent problems exposed during epidemic containment in some areas, the meeting required steps to close gaps and resolutely prevent the rebound of the pandemic.

The meeting reviewed and passed documents including an action plan to further the reform of State-owned enterprises between 2020 and 2022, a guideline on furthering the integrated development of information technology and the manufacturing sector as well as a plan to pilot reform in the rural housing land system.

It is important to improve the distribution and structural adjustment of the State-owned sector and make the sector more competitive, innovative, influential and able to resist risks, the statement said.

In moving forward with the integrated development of information technology and the manufacturing sector, it is important to focus on smart manufacturing, speed up the innovative development of the industrial internet and usher in fundamental reform in the means of production and the business form of the manufacturing sector, it added.