Page 14 - REPORT ON THE WORK OF THE GOVERNMENT

A total of 160 key counties were designated to receive assistance for rural
revitalization and dedicated support was provided to them. We stepped up

support for areas where residents relocated from inhospitable areas were resettled
together in communities as well as for other key areas, and continued to
implement and improve mechanisms for east-west cooperation, paired assistance,
and targeted support.

We also sent teams of medical and educational personnel as well as
technicians to provide assistance to previously impoverished areas. All of these
efforts enabled areas that were lifted out of poverty to accelerate development and
keep raising the incomes of local residents.

3. We deepened reform of key areas and crucial links to energize the market and
stimulate social creativity.
We continued reforms to develop the socialist market economy and struck a
proper balance between the government and the market. This enabled the market
to play a decisive role in resource allocation and the government to better play its

role, thus promoting both an efficient market and an effective government.
Our drive to transform government functions continued.
We completed institutional reform of both the State Council and local
governments. We accelerated efforts to build a unified national market, developed

a high-standard market system, and worked to create a market-oriented and
law-based business environment in keeping with international standards.
Great truths are always simple, and simple government administration is
always most effective. We made consistent efforts to promote reforms despite the
fact that they affected the interests of government itself.

We kept working to streamline government administration and delegate
power. We broadened market access with full implementation of the negative list
system. Since the introduction of this system, the negative list has been shortened

by 64 percent, and the practice of list-based management has been applied to all
items requiring government approval.
Over the years, we have cancelled or delegated to lower-level authorities the
power of administrative approval for over 1,000 items and slashed the number of
investment items subject to central government approval by over 90 percent. The

number of industrial production permit categories has been reduced from 60 to 10,
and the approval time for construction projects has been cut to no more than 120
working days.

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