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BEIJING: Premier Wen Jiabao pledged on Wednesday to tackle a vast menu of problems from pollution to the widening gap between rich and poor, but stressed economic development was still China's top priority.
He used his annual "state of the nation" address to promise every effort to make life more fair and equal for China's 1.3 billion people, whose country has been overhauled as it opens up more and more to the outside world.
Just months before China hosts the Olympic Games, Wen said a range of concerns were tarnishing the nation's modernisation drive – especially the inflation that keeps driving up the cost of food and basic essentials.
"We are clearly aware that there are still many problems affecting China's economic and social development and the work of the government," he told the opening session of the rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress.
"There are still quite a few problems in employment, the social safety net, education, medical and health care, income distribution, housing, product quality and safety, workplace safety and public security," Wen said.
"We must work harder to resolve them," he said – naming inflation, which hit an 11-year high last year, as the main concern for ordinary Chinese.
Nevertheless, Wen said, generating the wealth that has transformed a backward and rural nation into the world's fourth-largest economy would remain the primary goal.
"We must continue to take development as the top priority," he said.
With the people having no say in the political machinations, the legitimacy of the Communist Party which has ruled China for six decades rests with its ability to deliver prosperity across all sectors of the population.
But despite five years of double-digit economic growth, Wen acknowledged there were many social and environmental problems outstanding, and he conceded the party continued to have deep flaws.
Although China had grown richer, he said, the wealth divide between the fast-developing cities and rural areas was continuing to grow.
"The difficulty of maintaining steady agricultural development and keeping the income of farmers increasing has grown," Wen said.
He said China would this year increase spending on the social security system by 19.8 percent from 2007 to 276.2 billion yuan (about 39 billion dollars).
Spending on health care would rise 25 percent to 83.2 billion yuan, while the education budget would rise 45 percent to 156.2 billion yuan.
The rises in the spending in these social spheres are larger than the 17.6-percent increase in the military budget to 417.8 billion yuan that the government announced on Tuesday.
For the Communist Party, the seemingly never-ending problem of corruption and abuse of power among cadres remained a top concern, according to Wen.
"We will attach even greater importance to combating corruption and encouraging integrity, and fight corruption unequivocally," he said.
"In particular, we need to tackle the problems of excessive concentration of power and lack of checks on power."
Wen identified a range of social problems linked to corruption that were of major worries for the Chinese people, and pledged new campaigns to address these areas.
These campaigns would target environmental protection, food and drug safety as well as the taking of land belonging to ordinary people by the powerful.
Among the key specific macro-economic targets, Wen said the government would aim to keep inflation for the year at about 4.8 percent.
This was the same rate as 2007, which was an 11-year high and propelled mainly by soaring food costs.
"The current price hikes and increasing inflationary pressures are the biggest concern of the people," Wen said.
Wen said the government intended to slow economic growth to about eight percent in 2008, down from 11.4 percent in 2007.
On the military, Wen reasserted that a strong defence force was a central plank of China's modernisation, following complaints from the United States about its growing military power.
Wen and President Hu Jintao are set to be endorsed for five more years at the two-week parliamentary session, while the next generation of leaders are expected to be promoted as their grooming period picks up intensity.
- AFP/so
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