Page:2017 Report on the Work of the Government.pdf/17

 the following guidelines:

First, we should make progress while maintaining stable performance and keep our strategic focus. Stability is of overriding importance. We should ensure stable growth, maintain employment, and prevent risks. To ensure overall economic and social stability we must not allow the red line to be crossed concerning financial security, people's wellbeing, or environmental protection. We should, while maintaining stable performance, endeavor to make progress, deepen reforms, accelerate structural adjustments, be prepared to take on some really tough problems, and push to make progress in key areas.

Second, we should focus on supply-side structural reform. We must give priority to improving supply-side structure. We should streamline administration, reduce taxes, further expand market access, and encourage innovation; and we should keep micro entities energized, reduce ineffective supply while expanding effective supply, and better adapt to and guide demand. Like the struggle from chrysalis to butterfly, this process of transformation and upgrading is filled with promise but also accompanied by great pain; it is urgent, formidable, and complicated. We should press forward with courage and get the job done.

Third, we should expand aggregate demand as appropriate and improve its efficacy. China's potential domestic demand is enormous, and it is both necessary and possible for domestic demand to be expanded. The key is to know where to start. We need to increase consumer spending to improve people's lives, and boost investment to strengthen areas of weakness and sustain development, so that the expansion of domestic demand becomes more effective and sustainable and supply-side reform and demand-side regulation reinforce each other.

Fourth, we should rely on innovation to replace old growth drivers with new ones and speed up structural improvement and upgrading. Having reached the current stage of development, China can now advance only through reform and innovation. We have the largest quality workforce as well as the largest pool of scientists, engineers, and professionals in the world, and their potential for innovation is truly tremendous. We must continue to draw strength from reform and opening up, fully tap the potential of human resources and human capital, and move more quickly to pursue innovation-driven development. We should foster and develop new growth drivers while transforming and upgrading the traditional growth drivers. These steps will enable China's economy to maintain a medium-high rate of growth and China's industries to move toward the medium-high end.