Full Text: Report on China's economic, social development plan(6)

5. Efforts to conserve energy, reduce emissions and protect the ecological environment were further intensified.

We vigorously moved forward with energy conservation. Energy consumption per unit of GDP for the year dropped 2.01%, and although it failed to meet the planned target, we increased our efforts toward that end and constantly improved our policies and measures. The general plan for saving energy and reducing emissions during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period was introduced and implemented. We supported 924 major energy conservation projects, capable of generating annual energy savings equivalent to over 22 million tons of standard coal. We thoroughly implemented the project to promote energy-efficient products for the benefit of the people, and over 16 million high-efficiency air-conditioners, energy-efficient electric motors with a total capacity of more than five million kilowatts, and 160 million energy-saving light bulbs were distributed. The pilot program to demonstrate and popularize the use of energy-efficient vehicles and new-energy vehicles proceeded smoothly. Pilot projects to promote the use of semiconductor lights were carried out in 37 cities. The policy on energy performance contracting was further implemented. We supported 415 major projects to develop the circular economy and conserve resources, capable of saving 920 million tons of water and recycling and reusing 72.4 million tons of waste annually. We made smooth progress in developing national demonstration bases for recovering mineral resources from city waste, in upgrading industrial parks to make their operations more circular, and in recovering resources from kitchen waste; and achieved initial success in industrializing remanufacturing.

We worked harder to protect the ecological environment. We continued to make progress in the major projects to conserve water and soil along the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, protect virgin forests (the second phase), control the sources of dust storms affecting Beijing and Tianjin, comprehensively prevent karst areas from becoming stony deserts, improve small watersheds, and build forest shelterbelts. We expanded trials of comprehensively bringing soil erosion in terraced fields under control. We further consolidated the progress in returning cultivated land to forests and further improved the policy for returning grazing land to grasslands. We launched pilot projects to protect the ecosystems of lakes. We afforested more than 6.1 million hectares of land. We basically completed the short-term tasks of improving the ecosystems of the Tarim and Shiyang rivers, and energetically pushed forward comprehensive improvement of the water environment of the Tai Lake and other key water basins. We increased efforts to build urban sewage and garbage treatment facilities, and the daily capacities for urban wastewater treatment and garbage processing were up by 11 million tons and 110,000 tons, respectively. Flue-gas desulphurization systems were installed in all coal-fired power generating units that have been put into operation last year with a total capacity of more than 50 million kilowatts. Over 80% of lead-acid battery enterprises have been closed down or suspended. For the whole year, sulfur dioxide emissions and chemical oxygen demand dropped 2.2% and 2%, respectively, 0.7 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points higher than the planned targets; total ammonia nitrogen fell 1.52%, meeting the target; nitrogen oxide emissions rose 5.73%, failing to meet the target; water consumption per 10,000 yuan of value-added of industry was 82 cubic meters, down 8.9% and meeting the target; the percentage of industrial solid waste that was comprehensively utilized stood at 66.74%, failing to meet the target; and the percentages of urban sewage treated and urban household waste safely handled both exceeded the planned targets, reaching 82.6% and 78%, respectively.

We took realistic steps to respond to climate change. We issued and implemented the work plan for controlling greenhouse gas emissions during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period; carried out trials of carbon emissions trading in seven provinces and municipalities directly under the central government; actively participated in international talks such as those at the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban; and strengthened international cooperation and personnel training in addressing climate change.

7. All-round progress was made in education, health, culture and other social programs.

The reform and development of education progressed vigorously. We continued to increase the level of funding for operating expenses for rural compulsory education; raised the benchmark of public spending per compulsory education student per academic year by 100 yuan, reaching 500 yuan for primary schools and 700 yuan for junior secondary schools per student per year in the central and western regions; and launched the plan to improve nutrition for rural compulsory education students in contiguous poverty-stricken areas with particular difficulties, benefiting 26 million rural school students. The retention rate of nine-year compulsory education was 91.5%, up 1.8 percentage points from the previous year; the gross enrollment ratio for senior secondary education reached 84%, 1.5 percentage points higher than the previous year; and regular undergraduate and graduate enrollment totaled 6.815 million and 560,000, respectively, all meeting the targets. We further improved the system of community-level medical and health care services, and began setting up bases to clinically train general practitioners and making medical and health care services in communities IT-based. Hospitals and health clinics provided 3.51 beds per 1,000 people, up 7.3% year on year. The central leadership made comprehensive arrangements for deepening reform of the cultural system and promoting the great development and flourishing of socialist culture; remarkable progress was achieved in developing the public cultural service system; cultural industries accelerated development; major progress was made in the project to extend radio and television coverage to all villages, the national cultural information resource sharing project, and the East Wind Project to develop the ethnic press and publishing; greater efforts were devoted to developing infrastructure facilities for preserving national cultural and natural heritage sites; and the project of renovating and expanding the National Museum of China and the theater project of the National Theater Company of China were completed. Philosophy and the social sciences, the press and publishing, and literature and art all flourished. Infrastructure for key national tourist sites and traveling routes further improved, the scale of the tourism industry continued to increase, and the total number of tourist trips reached 2.78 billion, an increase of 12.7%. The natural population growth rate stood at 4.79 per thousand, which met the target. The development of the system of social services for elderly people was accelerated, and the number of nursing home beds reached 20.1 per 1,000 elderly persons, an increase of 11.7% over the previous year. The national fitness program was thoroughly carried out, and sports developed at a faster pace. Rehabilitation and nursing care projects for the disabled were launched.