Third, we supported the long-term development of agriculture and farmers. The central government spent 81.278 billion yuan from bond sales and budgetary allocations for capital construction in agricultural and rural infrastructure development in 2005 to further improve production and living conditions in rural areas. Another 9.855 billion yuan from the central government budget was spent on general agricultural development, and 76.6% of the increased funding went to rural infrastructure projects such as those to upgrade low- and medium-yield farmland in major grain-producing areas. In addition, we also experimented with the use of equity investment and special discounts to make the guiding, demonstrating and stimulating role of the government's funding of general agricultural development more effective. The central government spent 400 million yuan to subsidize the training of 2.8 million rural workers to help them find nonagricultural jobs, an increase of 60% over the amount of 2004. Funding for poverty alleviation through development was again increased, reaching 13 billion yuan in 2005. The central government appropriated 25.17 billion yuan to directly subsidize farmers who returned their cultivated land to forests. We continued to finance efforts to spread application of agricultural science and technology, industrialize agricultural operations, develop special farmers' cooperatives, build small water conservancy facilities, and test soil to determine the correct fertilizer formula.

Figure 2

Breakdown of the 297.5 Billion Yuan Spent from the 2005 Central Government Budget to Support Agriculture, Rural Areas and Farmers

3. Increasing government spending to stimulate development of all social programs.

First, we supported employment, reemployment and social security work. Total national expenditures for employment and social security in 2005 totaled 364.927 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.1%. This included 162.359 billion yuan spent by the central government on social security, up 10% over the previous year's amount. We provided strong support for pilot programs to improve the urban social security system in the three northeastern provinces, improved the system of basic old-age pensions for retired enterprise employees, and worked out plans for expanding trials to fully fund personal retirement accounts. The Ministry of Finance actively participated in the drafting and implementation of the preferential fiscal and tax policies of the central government related to employment and reemployment. Most provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government have basically incorporated basic living allowances for workers laid off from SOEs into the unemployment insurance system and basically all eligible needy urban residents are now covered by the subsistence allowance program. We supported efforts to solve the problems of demobilized military personnel, including those working in enterprises as cadres. Strong support was provided for disaster relief work. Charges levied on rural residents seeking jobs in cities were reviewed to eliminate unreasonable charges, and active measures were taken to address the financial problems of rural migrant workers in sending their children to school and the difficulty the government has in providing management and services for such workers.