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Likely hot topics of NPC session
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NEARLY 3,000 deputies from across the country have arrived in Beijing for the coming Fourth Session of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), scheduled to open today.
Earlier arrivals are busy with giving the last touch to proposals they have prepared for the session.
Wu Xufeng, a deputy from the Chongqing Municipality and head of a research institute under the Ministry of Information Industry, brought a proposal on building the municipality into a software development base in West China.
Mao Daru, a deputy from Beijing, has a proposal on developing a market-based agriculture and futures trading of farm products.
Another deputy, Yang Ziqiong, from Shanxi Province, advocates the enactment of a law on economic restructuring.
According to Yang, this year's session will focus on the 10th Five-Year Plan for national economic and social development, the first such plan in the new century as well as the first after the establishment in China of a socialist market economy.
"However, the attention of deputies will not stop at this. They will look into the next 10 years, even 50 years," he said.
In his three-step strategy for China, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping predicted that by the mid-21st century, the country's GDP per capita will reach the level of medium-developed countries.
The goal of the first two steps, to double China's 1980 GDP per capita and let people lead a well-off life by the year 2000, have been achieved.
For the drafting of the 10th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese Government has conducted extensive consultations among the public, including opening a special website for the purpose.
Deliberations of the NPC deputies will focus on two topics: what will China be like in five years, and what the Chinese people need to do to achieve their goals.
It is widely agreed that agriculture is the foundation of the Chinese economy. But in reality, incomes of Chinese farmers have increased at a very slow pace, amid amounting financial burdens. The issue has aroused much concern.
To solve the issue, Premier Zhu Rongji announced the introduction of an experimental tax-for-fees reform in East China's Anhui Province at last year's NPC session.
The experiment, hailed as a move to solve the issue of excessive financial burdens for farmers from the root, is widely understood to have had the desired effect.
Measures to raise the status of agriculture, increase farmers' income and promote wider rural reforms, will certainly be hot topics during the session.
Deputies are also expected to pay attention to the establishment of a social security system and the re-employment of laid-off workers by State-owned enterprises (SOEs), to pave the way for further SOEs reforms.
Several ambitious projects by the Chinese Government, including the construction of a railway from Qinghai to Tibet, the laying of a natural gas pipeline from the west hinterland to coast regions, and the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, will be discussed during the session.
Other likely topics of the NPC deputies include: challenges that are expected to come with China's expected accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the establishment of a set of moral standards that are suited to a market economy, the prevention of corruption and Beijing's bid to host the Olympic Games.
The NPC session this year is expected to draw up an exciting future for China, deputies said.(Xinhua)
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