This is an important component of the Outline as well as an important guarantee for accomplishing the various tasks during the next five years.

Stimulating scientific and technological progress and innovation to give a strong impetus to structural readjustment and economic development. First, we need to vigorously conduct strategically significant high technology research, strive to make breakthroughs in some key technological fields that have a direct bearing on economic lifelines and national security, improve our innovative capability, and accelerate the application of high and new technology in production. Second, technological support needs to be provided for the upgrading of traditional industries. We need to concentrate on making technological progress in the processing and converting of agricultural products, manufacturing equipment, conserving water and energy, and finishing textiles. We also need to accelerate the application of high and new technology in traditional industries. Third, we need to strengthen basic research and applied basic research and improve our ability to make sustained progress in scientific and technological innovation. We need to strengthen pioneering and interdisciplinary research in key fields of the basic sciences. We have to increase basic research in selected fields where we have been doing well and which have a great bearing on development, and we have to strive to make fresh progress in the important fields of genomics, information technology, nanoscience, ecology and geoscience. We have to facilitate the integration of natural and social sciences and promote the development of management science. Emphasis should be placed on the development of philosophy and other social sciences and the advances of theoretical innovation.

We need to accelerate the reform of the structure of scientific disciplines and technological fields and promote the closer connection of science and technology with the economy. Efforts to develop a state system to stimulate innovation need to be increased, and enterprises should be encouraged to play an important role in technological progress and innovation. We need to continue to encourage research institutes engaged in technological development to merge with enterprises or be turned into enterprises, push forward the reform of non-profit research institutes, and establish a number of research institutes that can exert international influence. We need to develop agencies providing scientific and technological services. We need to improve the venture capital investment mechanism, establish a growth enterprise market, and support small and medium-sized enterprises in technological innovation. The state and the society need to invest more in science and technology. Great efforts have to be made to build national key laboratories.

Persisting in the appropriate development of future-oriented education to serve national economic and social development. In developing education, we should meet the needs of modernization, the world and the future, and concentrate on improving quality-oriented education to ensure that students improve in terms of their moral qualities, intellectual ability, physical fitness and aesthetic appreciation. We need to consolidate the achievements of making nine-year compulsory education basically universal in the country and eliminating illiteracy among young and middle-aged people, accelerate the expansion of senior secondary school education and higher education, and develop high-level programs in selected universities and disciplines. Great efforts have to be made to develop vocational education and training and to establish an educational system featuring the integration of vocational education with general education. We need to develop adult education and various forms of continuing education and gradually establish a system of lifelong education. Information technology needs to be used to develop long-distance education. In light of the needs of economic and social development, we need to continue to revise the educational structure and organization, optimize the division of disciplines, update teaching materials, reform the curriculum, examination and evaluation systems, improve the methods and quality of instruction, strengthen moral education and ideological and political work, recruit a strong corps of capable teachers, and improve the overall quality of teachers.

We need to deepen the reform of the systems for operating schools and managing education. We need to allow institutions of higher learning to make operating decisions according to law, and to continue the transformation to a system of independent operation of support services in universities and colleges. We need to encourage and help all sectors of society to run schools, and we need to exercise oversight over their operation. The state and society need to invest more in education. More transfer payments and investment in special projects from the central and provincial financial departments have to be provided for education in poverty-stricken areas. County governments need to strengthen overall planning of funds for elementary education. Measures must be implemented to guarantee the coordinated payment of teachers’ salaries. We need to improve the systems of scholarships, grants and loans to support students, and we need to take effective measures to curb arbitrary charges levied by schools.

Making efforts to implement the strategy of tapping human resources, and focusing on the important tasks of training, attracting and utilizing talented people. In light of the overall interests of the modernization drive and long-term development, we need to train and nurture a contingent of leading cadres who are highly competent, who persist in taking the socialist road with Chinese characteristics, who have a good understanding of political theory and a pioneering spirit, who have mastered modern science and culture and acquired managerial expertise, and who are well-experienced. We need to train and cultivate a contingent of specialized, high quality public servants who are honest, industrious and eager to serve the people, and a contingent of professional personnel and enterprise managers who have advanced technological and managerial knowledge and innovative ability and meet the needs of economic and social development. We need to attach importance to training leading scholars in frontier disciplines and improving the scientific qualifications and working skills of the entire labor force. We need to deepen the reform of the personnel system; establish and improve the methods by which professionals are recruited, examined, evaluated, transferred, motivated and supervised; and formulate a mechanism that encourages talented people to emerge in large numbers and to make full use of their talent. We need to establish and improve the human resources market and protect intellectual property rights in accordance with the law. We need to attract and employ highly qualified professional personnel from abroad, and encourage students studying overseas to come back to work in China or serve their country in other appropriate ways.