2010年政府各项目标确定

What was interesting about this work report, which Premier Wen Jiabao delivered at the opening session of the NPC, he received 33 rounds of applause, incredibly consistent when you compare it to last year, when he received 32 rounds of applause. But last year was a crisis for the Chinese economy. It'd been hit hard by the global financial situation.

This year, Premier Wen says that China is the first major economy to have emerged from that crisis, to have actually turned the corner. With that in mind he set the goals for 2010: GDP growth, they're hoping for around 8 percent approximately. That seems modest given the last quarter was 10.7. The Chinese government would like to create 9 million new jobs, keep the unemployment rate no higher than 4.6 percent, inflation around 3 percent. Already it's about 1.5 percent, so that seems a modest goal. And new bank lending, wants, the government wants to limit that to 7.5 trillion RMB. That's about a trillion US dollars. That's down about 20 percent last year.

Now much like the United States, Premier Wen Jiabao seems to be concerned about jobs, jobs, jobs. During his speech, he told the delegates there, "we will do everything in our power to increase employment. This is the top priority in our work of ensuring and improving people's well-being."

Another big issue, especially for people who live in the big cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, runaway real estate prices. Premier Wen addressed that topic as well. He said we will resolutely curb the precipitous rise of housing prices in some cities and satisfy people's basic need for housing. He also conceded that right now there is excess capacity in the Chinese economy, which basically means they're making too much stuff for too little money. But he did say, and this is quite telling, that it's getting much harder to restructure those industries. Pauline.

So John, it looks like he touched on a lot of different issues, especially jobs and housing. But what about other sectors? What did he talk about in terms of priorities for spending?

Well, yeah, everything seems to be a priority in this work report, you know, the record is quite flourishing. But what was interesting is that if you look at how much they're now spending on social services and the talk about trying to narrow the income gap between the rich and poor in this country and also trying to improve the domestic situation on issues like education, medical and health care, social security, employment, low-income housing and culture, there is a fairly generous increase in the budget there, about 8.8 percent. That takes it up to about 65 billion yuan, about ten billion US dollars. That increase, though, is still really, about ten dollars per person. 1.3 billion people live in this country. Still it's a significant increase and it shows at least the government is moving towards that direction of social services.

Interestingly though, the defense budget, only a 7.5 percent increase, everyone was expecting double-digit increase there.