China issues economic reform guidelines

China's top planning agency has today released key economic reforms for the year ahead. High on the agenda - medical insurance, public housing and a crack down on anti-competitive practices.

Under the guideline of reform work in 2013, China's National Development and Reform Commission has developed a raft of changes.

Among them, stepping up its efforts to promote orderly urbanization, while keeping people's interests a top priority. The country will unify medical insurance system for both urban and rural residents. The government will merge the low-rent housing and public rental housing projects to meet the requirement of urbanization.

The guidelines also set the agenda for the reform of the administrative system, which is seen as a key factor to vitalize market players. The government will remove policies and regulations that disobey the rules of fair competition, and will promote civil capital to be invested in sectors including financial, energy, railway and telecommunication. The country is set to open some of the railway ownership and management rights. China will further remove red tape to improve the efficiency of examining and approving projects, and to strictly control the number of new projects in industries with overcapacity.

Kong Jingyuan, Director General of Dept. of Comprehensive Reform of The Econ. System, NDRC, said, "We must further relax administrative control and limits to give more power to lower-level government bodies, and open more investment fields, letting civil capital to contribute to infrastructure construction. "

The NDRC also said that the reform requires a proper relationship between the government and the market, as well as the government and society.