Xinhua Daily News Release------Shanghai Guarantees the Livelihood: From Deregulating the Residence Registration Restriction to Relaxing the Social Security Policy

News of Shanghai Branch, Xinhua News Agency: With the net increase of 67,000 job posts, the overall construction of affordable houses of six million square meters, the deregulation of the residence registration restriction, etc., Shanghai, being the biggest economic central city of China, has made new progress in the last six months in various kinds of livelihood undertakings including the exploitation of job posts, housing guarantee, social security, education and public health, and income of urban and rural citizens.

Using every conceivable means to promote employment

Xing Zhexiang, a 23 year-old junior college graduate, is busy these days for his new career. The online supermarket he opened on Internet was run for a week, and this young boss, jointly with four contemporaries, contacts the suppliers, renews the online commodity information, and delivers the commodities by moped in the burning sun by themselves. Although sometimes they have to work for 20 hours a day, Xiao Xing still has ease of mind: “This Municipality published the small-sum secured loan policy which made it easy for me to successfully get a loan of 30,000 yuan for starting a business, and realize the dream of opening a net-shop.”

To obtain employment is the basis of livelihood. The net-increase of job posts in Shanghai in the first half of this year was 67,000. Xiao Xing and his four colleagues belonged to these thousands of employed people. Instead of decreasing, the job posts in Shanghai increased in this most severe economic situation ever since the new century. Zhou Haiyang, director of the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, mentioned that Shanghai had decided to adopt the thoughts of “supporting the enterprises, guaranteeing the employment, and promoting the stability” by the end of last year, and allocated the working plan of “1+3” to stabilize the employment, the “1” referred to the method of promoting employment through encouraging the act of starting business; the “3” referred to stable posts, vocational training, and employment assistance respectively. The only reason for achieving the net increase of 67,000 job posts was the adoption of “carrying out in multi-aspects, and adopting multi-policies”.

In Shanghai, the governments at all levels tried every means to guarantee employment. In Hongkou district, the district government, jointly with Shanghai University of Engineering Science, and Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration, established “Shanghai International Cruise Economy Talents Training Base”; Ouyang sub-district pushed forward the special employment assistance act called “one account, one home-visit, and one recruitment” for those graduating college students within the community; Guangzhong sub-district signed contracts of long-term cooperation with Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, and Shanghai Young Cadres College, and became the practice base for these two universities...

Being the key employment population, the graduates, peasant workers, white collars, and other groups received much concern. With a view to helping the college graduates in getting employed, multi-methods including special job fairs, professional skills training, vocational probation, etc. were simultaneously adopted. Up to the beginning of this July, the overall signature rate of graduating college students was almost equal to that of last year. As for peasant workers, by the end of this June, the number of people joining comprehensive insurance for out-of-town personnel reached 3.7 million in Shanghai, with an increase of 200,000 in comparison with that of this January.

Leaving the humble abodes and moving to new houses

Gu Shengwei, a Shanghai citizen, got a new apartment of 88 square meters with the market value of 1.09 million yuan by replacing his 40-square-meter old li-long house (floor area) with the market evaluation of more than 600,000 yuan, together with the “ensured minimum compensation” of 150,000 yuan, and part of his own deposits.

At present, Shanghai still has old li-long residential houses and slum-dwellers of over six million square meters, and the living conditions of over 200,000 households are extremely difficult. Such being the case, the fulfillment of old residential area renovation and the construction of ensuring housing become the most important thing in Shanghai’s work of guaranteeing livelihood.

The aim of enhancing the construction strength to practically improve the masses’ living conditions, and the aim of perfecting the system construction to realize the openness, fairness, and justice to the maximum extent shall be simultaneously achieved. Such being the case, the innovation of working mechanism becomes the key point. This year Shanghai carried out in some areas the pilot work of the “opinion-soliciting system” respectively on the willingness for old residential area renovation and the renovation scheme; all documents and agreements concerning the demolition and renovation were opened to the public by sticking on the wall, so as to completely eradicate the “black box” operation; the policy of “counting bricks accompanied by ensured minimum compensation” was comprehensively carried out to ensure that each household was guaranteed in the aspects of minimum living areas and housing type.

In downtown Jing’an district, the “renovation of scattered old li-long houses” supported by government finance was pushed forward continuously in an overall manner, and this year the district finance has already appropriated the renovation fund of 0.2 billion yuan. Gong Deqing, secretary of the district party committee, mentioned that the renovation of old residential areas were well received by all citizens for it not only took the settlement of citizens into consideration, but also solved, as a package, many citizens’ practical problems including social insurance, serious illness subsidy, etc..

The construction of ensuring housing including resettlement residential houses and affordable houses, etc. is in full swing in Sanlin of Pudong New District, Junlian of Minhang District, Sijing of Songjiang District, Gucun of Baoshan District of Shanghai. Liu Haisheng, director of the Shanghai Housing Guarantee and Houses Administration, expressed that Shanghai would guarantee the total area of newly started construction of affordable houses reached six million square meters by the end of this year; the first lot of affordable houses would be completed in the second half of this year, and the residence application of citizens would be accepted; metros would be available at the doorsteps, and hospitals, schools, food markets would be provided.

From nominal residence registration to actual treatment

This February, Shanghai took the lead in deregulating the restrictions on the residence registration policy among all large cities throughout the whole country. The new policy of “changing Shanghai Residence Permit to permanent residence” provided that the holder of Shanghai Residence Permit who had held the Permit for seven years or more, paid the social insurance premiums for seven years or more, obtained corresponding professional qualifications, and met other conditions provided, might change his/her Shanghai Residence Permit to Shanghai permanent residence. On June 17, the implementation rules for this new policy were promulgated and the stage of substantial operation started. At present, the functional governmental departments had accepted the application for permanent residence from the first lot of “new Shanghai people”.

In the process of Shanghai’s promotion of “taking the lead in four aspects”, and the construction of “four centers” and socialist modern metropolis, the Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal People’s Government clearly pointed out that the bottleneck for Shanghai’s future development was the talents. The insufficient total number of talents and the inadequate aggregation of top-level talents in Shanghai restricted the optimization and upgrade of industrial structure and the improvement of the city’s competitive power. A more scientific viewpoint on talents development was settled--------"gathering talents from all resources despite of education background, professional title, and identity".

The exploration is continuing. On July 1, Shanghai published and implemented a new policy on social insurance, and started the process of attracting out-of-town employees to participate in local city and town social insurance. Wang Daben, associate professor of the Institute of Population, East China Normal University, said that the newly published social insurance policy was an effective supplement and connection to Shanghai’s new policy on residence registration, which would enlarge the scope of beneficiaries of the “changing residence permit to permanent residence” policy, and the group of peasant workers was the direct beneficiary.

Wang Daben said that Shanghai had started the process of systematic improvement by pushing forward the changing from nominal residence registration to actual treatment. “The residence registration is just a symbol; its real value is the treatment which includes the social insurance. The acts of deregulating the residence registration restriction and relaxing the social security policy witness the realization of the ideology of ‘accepting things from all sources with tolerance, being magnanimous and modest’”.

Shanghai also laid stress on coordinating the urban and rural development in an overall manner in the process of guaranteeing livelihood. In Fengxian District, a remote suburb, the district government increased the financial budget from 60 million yuan of last year to 0.1 billion yuan of this year which enabled the government to have sufficient fund in purchasing various kinds of social administration posts, and public-welfare services or undertakings posts. For the act of increasing the pensions for peasants in rural areas by 80 yuan/month per capita in average by government, the district finance had the expenditure increased by 2.61 million yuan.

Shanghai Municipal Party Committee made definite arrangements in the 8^th General Meeting of the 9^th Session of Shanghai Municipal Party Committee as the follows: the livelihood work of promoting employment, improving social security and housing construction shall be continuously done well in the second half of this year; the method of using financial funds in favor of the masses with difficulties, or the problems of interests which the masses paid more attention to, or directly related to or the most realistic to the masses shall be adopted to practically do well the livelihood projects expected by citizens, and realize the aim of making the masses have benefits for their living conditions.