Investment to support agriculture continued to increase. A total of 339.7 billion yuan from the central government (excluding 12 billion yuan of general direct subsidies to grain growers deriving from special surcharges on oil sales) was spent on agriculture, rural areas and farmers, a year-on-year increase of 42.2 billion yuan. Working and living conditions in rural areas were improved. A total of 6 billion yuan from the central government, triple the amount for the previous year, along with 6.9 billion yuan from local governments was spent on safe drinking water projects in the countryside, benefiting 28.97 million rural residents. The central government also invested 2.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 150%, and local governments invested 1.56 billion yuan in building rural methane facilities to serve an additional 4.5 million families. In addition, 19 billion yuan from the central government and 24 billion yuan from local governments were invested in the rural road upgrade project, rebuilding and extending 120,000 kilometers of asphalt or cement roads to connect more townships and villages. We encouraged retailers to open stores in more townships and villages, thus setting up more than 100,000 stores in the countryside.

Agricultural structure was further improved. Grain acreage rose by 1.1 million hectares from the previous year to reach 105.38 million hectares. Once again, we had a rich grain harvest with total output amounting to 497.46 million tons, 13.44 million tons more than the year before. High-quality special wheat acreage accounted for 55.2% of China's total wheat acreage and the acreage of high-quality rice accounted for 69.1% of total rice acreage, up 6 percentage points and 4 percentage points year-on-year respectively. Cotton and sugar output increased by 17.8% and 16.2% respectively, and the output of meat, milk and aquatic products increased by 4.6%, 18% and 2.8% respectively.

3. Improvement was made in economic restructuring.

Industrial restructuring was accelerated. Total added value of large high-tech enterprises rose by 18.7%, 2.1 percentage points higher than the average for all large industrial enterprises. A significant breakthrough was made in the independent manufacture of key equipment including complete sets of hot tandem mills for large steel sheets and the air-cooling system for large power stations. Further progress was made in restructuring industries with excess production capacity. A number of backward production facilities were shut down in accordance with the law. For example, in the steel industry, a number of smaller blast furnaces with a capacity under 100 cubic meters and small converters with a production capacity under 15 tons were closed down. All aluminum Soderberg cells were eliminated. Most wet-processing kilns for making cement have now been shut down or demolished, increasing the proportion of new dry-process cement to over 50% of total cement output. In the coal sector, a total of 5,931 smaller mines were closed down, eliminating backward facilities with total production capacity of 110 million tons that did not meet safety requirements or were damaging to resources.