The government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday at the opening session of the National People's Congress (NPC) was his third since 2003.

The report, like the two previous ones, was characterized by Wen's personal traits of pragmatism and being close to the people.

In the past, all government work reports focused on the five-year plans for national economic and social development in the first year of implementation.

In a bold shift from the decades-old practice, Wen's 35-page report devoted over two-thirds of its space to the government work plan for this year while giving a brief introduction to the 11th Five-Year Guidelines (2006-10).

The reform is aimed at "better solving the practical problems of most concern to the people and benefiting NPC deputies' supervision over government work," as the premier said during an earlier symposium on his report.

To make his report more responsive to reality, Wen held four symposiums in February, inviting a range of people including economic and social researchers as well as farmers, rural teachers and village doctors to give their frank suggestions.

"Our policies are not born from nothing, but rather formulated in accordance with the grass-roots reality," Wen told the participants to the symposiums.

Out of such a belief, the premier responded to the people's needs and calls in his report, and did not shy away from outstanding problems and challenging tasks of his government.

The report highlighted China's economic and social imbalances that have drawn most complaints from the public, including sky-rocketing medical and education costs, illegal land seizure, housing demolition and rampant pollution.

The wide applause from the nearly 3,000 deputies showed their appreciation for the government's courage to address these urgent problems and its determination to meet emerging challenges.

Compared with his last two government work reports, the to-do list concentrates on tasks that are more critical to the country's future sound and sustainable development.

The premier vowed to pay close attention to the well-being of the people and social justice to ensure all the people can enjoy the fruits of reform and development.

While giving top priority to helping the nation's rural and urban poor, the report places an unprecedented emphasis on taking concrete measures to serve the immediate interests of the people.

All of the public's top concerns ranging from medical treatment, housing, education, employment to workplace safety are given much attention in the report.

It proposes to boost the incomes of both urban and rural residents while pledging to curb soaring property prices and offer affordable housing to the needy.

The report is committed to providing equal education opportunities for every child during the nine-year compulsory education period by waiving charges in the countryside by 2007 and helping children in low-income urban families and rural families working in cities.

Wen said the government will increase financial support to help boost employment, create better medical and social security systems for all the people.

To narrow the widening wealth gap between urban and rural people, the report pledges massive spending over the next five years to build a new socialist countryside and improve living conditions of about 750 million farmers.

Following the historic scrapping of the country's 2,600-year-old agriculture tax by the end of this year, the State will provide the countryside with an annual fund of 103 billion yuan (US$12 billion) to cover local government operation and education cost.

Encouraging and ambitious as these goals are, to realize them does require long-term efforts by the government and the whole of society.

Hopefully, as Wen said, the government will accelerate the reform of the administrative system and further transform its functions to facilitate fulfilling all the tasks.

(China Daily March 6, 2006)