FINDING VACANCY: A university student looks at employment information at a job market in Lhasa, capital city of west China's Tibet Autonomous Region, on December 18, 2011 (XINHUA)

Employment

Target: The Central Government is to invest 423 million yuan ($66.82 million) in the employment sector, so as to add over 9 million jobs in urban areas. Urban unemployment rates will be kept below 4.6 percent.

Year-end performance: China has implemented preferential tax policies to promote employment, encourage college graduates to find work in grass-root businesses, and promote business creation to drive employment. Some 9.94 million young people had jobs in the first three quarters, exceeding expectations, and the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent at the end of September.

Analysis: As for the whole job market in China, labor supply and demand was on reversal, which means that the age of cheap labor is over, said Yu. "Meanwhile, it is still hard for many recent university graduates to find jobs, along with hardship for factories to recruit new workers," said Yu.

"Unfair recruitment occurred in some state-owned institutions and enterprises this year, seriously damaging social fairness," said Xiao Yaofei. He appealed to the government to set up a just and transparent recruitment system, so as to end employment policies which discriminate according to household registration and gender. "The government should also support small and medium-sized enterprises to expand job market, because job markets can only be expanded by allowing small enterprises to be prosperous," Xiao added.

Education:

Target: The Central Government plans for education spending nationwide to account for 4 percent of the country's GDP in 2012, with an aim to promote balanced education around the nation. Local governments where rural workers gather should run public schools to guarantee equal compulsory education for children accompanying rural workers.

Year end report: Education spending in the first 11 months was 1,233.24 billion yuan ($194.77 billion), rising 25.8 percent from last year, or 86.5 percent of the budget this year. The Central Government has appropriated funds of 4.57 billion yuan ($721.64 million) to reward outstanding provinces properly implementing compulsory education for children of migrant workers.

In addition, a campaign of "free lunch" set up by non-government organizations was echoed by the government. The State Council decided to start plans to improve nutrition for rural children during their nine-year compulsory education period beginning in autumn this year.

Analysis: The government has increased investment in the education sector in recent years. If GDP this year grew by 9 percent, and education spending concludes the budget, then education spending will account for 3.26 percent of the GDP this year, according to Wang Panfeng, associate professor at the School of Continuing Education affiliated to the Capital Normal University. As the government pays more attention to education of migrant workers' offspring and pre-school children, problems of education are basically settled in China.

However, many complain of a lack of access to education at the best primary and middle schools. "The government should address systematic problems in education. One is choosing schools from primary to middle school periods, due to unbalanced allocation of education resources, and the other is academic corruption caused by bureaucratic administration in some institutions of higher learning, which caused weak creation ability," said Wang.

(Source: Xinhua)