"People will find that they have a broader array of choices when making investments and starting businesses," delegate Lang Guoqing said.

Jiang Zemin said in his report: "It is necessary to foster notions and form a business mechanism in conformity with the basic economic system in the primary stage of socialism and create a social environment in which people are encouraged to achieve something and helped to make a success of their career."

In this regard, the government is expected to take a series of measures, such as breaking monopolies, providing a freer environment for investors, reforming administrative examination and approval procedures, rectifying market economic order, and lowering the access threshold for investors.

"Ordinary people will have more say in the decision-making process," said Zhang Guangqiang, a congress delegate from Northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

Zhang noted that a major content of building a well-off society is to improve socialist democracy and the legal system to better safeguard and respect people's political, economic and cultural rights.

Jiang Zemin said in his report that all legitimate income, from work or not, should be protected, which has garnered intense reactions.

"This brilliant exposition further assures the income distribution results under the current basic distribution system," said Su Hainan, director of the Labor Salary Institute under the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

"The immediate and vital interests of ordinary people will be firmly protected so long as we strictly carry out the essential points of distribution system reform," Su said.

Regarding the protection of legitimate income, Su said current criminal laws and anti-smuggling laws have clearly delineated the fight against illegal incomes grabbed through corruption, tax evasion, smuggling and fake production.

Other laws and regulations, including the labor law, have made prescriptions on protecting legitimate work income.

Furthermore, policies on the commercialization of achievements in scientific research stipulate that scientific research personnel may be paid with income from stocks or may deduct a percentage of money from the scientific achievements' direct income, according to Su.

(China Daily November 13, 2002)