9. Ensuring and improving the people's wellbeing and promoting better and new ways of conducting social governance
We will do everything within our capacity to keep enhancing public services and resolve issues that are of common concern to the people.
We will improve the fairness and quality of education. We will ensure that education performs its fundamental mission of fostering virtue. We will promote high-quality, well-balanced development and urban-rural integration of compulsory education, allocate educational resources according to the size of residential population, and see that school-age children can enroll in nearby schools. We will ensure that compulsory education teachers receive their pay packages in full and strengthen targeted training programs, on-the-job training, and salary guarantees for rural teachers. We will continue our efforts to reduce the burden on students in compulsory education.
We will increase resources for public-interest preschool education via multiple channels and promote the development of regular county high schools. We will provide quality special needs education and continuing education and regulate the development of private schools. We will promote general and proficient use of standard spoken and written Chinese. Steps will be taken to upgrade vocational schools and refine the mechanism for integrating vocational education with industry.
We will develop higher education to its full potential, promote the development of world-class universities and academic disciplines on a categorized basis, move faster to train professionals we are badly lacking in the fields of science, engineering, agriculture and medicine, and support the development of higher education in central and western regions. Universities and colleges will continue to enroll greater numbers of students from central and western regions and rural areas. A mechanism will be established whereby our schools, families and whole society work together to advance education.
There are 290 million students in schools and universities in China. We must ensure that education, which is important to millions of families and the future of our nation, is well-run.
We will improve medical and health services. Government subsidies for basic medical insurance for rural and non-working urban residents will be increased by an average of 30 yuan per person, and subsidies for basic public health services will be increased by an average of 5 yuan per person. The unified management of basic medical insurance funds will be advanced at the provincial level. We will carry out bulk government purchases for more medicines and high-value medical consumables and ensure both the production and supply of these items.
We will intensify supervision over the quality and safety of drugs and vaccines. Reform of medical insurance payments under the medical insurance scheme will be deepened, and medical insurance funds will be placed under strict oversight. We will improve the policy on directly settling medical expenses incurred outside of a patient's home province, and ensure that the list of medicines covered by medical insurance is largely consistent nationwide.
We will move forward with the Healthy China initiative with emphasis on prevention. We will steadily enhance services for the prevention and treatment of illnesses including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and cancer, and better ensure the supply of medicines for rare diseases. We will improve the disease prevention and control network, make greater efforts to train public health personnel, and improve our capabilities for monitoring major epidemics and conducting early warning, epidemiological investigation and tracing, and emergency response.
We will deepen the reform of public hospitals, see that the charges collected by medical institutions and the services they offer are well-regulated, continue to assist medical institutions hit by Covid-19, and shore up weak links in services such as maternal and child healthcare, pediatrics, mental health and medical care for the elderly. We will support initiatives for vitalizing and developing traditional Chinese medicine and advance its all-around reform.
