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 for an increase in revenue; it also keeps policy options open for macro regulation.

Government expenditure is budgeted at 21 trillion yuan, representing a further increase in the scale of spending. The central government will increase general transfer payments to local governments by 10.9 percent, to strengthen local finances, especially in the central and western regions.

We will improve the structure of budgetary spending, making sure that more financial allocations are used for the public good and universal benefit, increasing support for the three critical battles against potential risk, poverty, and pollution, and weighting spending toward innovation-driven development, agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents, and the improvement of living standards.

Although the government finances are improving, government at all levels must keep its belt tightened, keep things as simple as possible, abstain from all excess, and strictly control general expenditures, so that these precious funds are used to add growth drivers for sustaining development and meet people's most urgent needs.

Our prudent monetary policy will remain neutral, with easing or tightening only as appropriate. We need to make sure that the valve of aggregate monetary supply is well controlled, maintain moderate growth in M2 money supply, credit, and aggregate financing, ensure a reasonable, stable level of liquidity, and increase the proportion of direct finance, particularly equity finance. We will improve the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, make better use of differentiated reserve ratio and credit policies, and encourage more funds to flow toward small and micro businesses, agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents, and poor areas, and to better serve the real economy.

For government to deliver this year, we must act on Xi Jinping's economic thinking for new-era socialism with Chinese characteristics, continue following the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, and regard stability and progress as being indivisible. Specifically, we will do the following:

First, we will strongly promote high-quality development. Development is the underpinning and the key for solving all our country's problems. We will devote attention to addressing unbalanced and insufficient development. Centering on developing a modernized economy, we will put quality first and give priority to performance, and promote economic structural improvement and upgrading. We must respect objective economic laws, consider both long-