Ever since China opened up to the world in 1980's, the Shanghai Municipal Government, led by the Communist Party of China and the State Council, makes great effort to build the city into an international economic, financial, trade and shipping center. With the cooperation and hardwork of Shanghai people, the city is progressing to its goal as a global metropolitan. The new team of leaders of the Shanghai government took office in February 2003. "The power of the government is entrusted by the people; the interest of people is above all," as Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng promise in his inaugural. Guided by the Shanghai Party Committee, the city's new leadership vows to strictly perform its official duties; to make significant progress in self-improvement, and to intensify the shift of its role from administrative to public service. The Shanghai government will build itself into a service government that would share with the people all their happiness and troubles; a solid responsible government that is efficient, honest and diligent; a law-abiding government that respects legal system and rules strictly and impartially.

Han Zheng: Take Strong Measures to Accomplish the Yearly Task of Employment Promotion

02/12/2004

At the conference held by Shanghai CPC Committee and Shanghai Government on the afternoon of August 18, Hanzheng, Vice Secretary of Shanghai CPC Committee and Shanghai Mayor, pointed out that we should focus on the following tasks in line with implementing the policy of National Reemployment Task Symposium:

1) Further define the accountabilities to guarantee the target accomplishment of the employment posts increasing and the unemployment rate control. It¡¯s one of the important accountabilities for the governments at all levels to settle the tasks of employment and reemployment, and it's one of the key goals of the government's macro-control to increase employment posts and control the unemployment rate. Currently, the governments and related departments at all levels should put the tasks of employment and unemployment in more prior place and further intensify the accountability system of employment promotion. We should continue to take the increasing of employment posts and the control of registered unemployment rate as the critical standard to evaluate the performance of the governments and related departments at all levels, and firmly implement the year-beginning target breakdown level by level. We should gather out strength to rearrange the government-funded public labor posts so as to offer these posts to the destitute citizens in Shanghai. The government should continue to buy out the commonwealth posts and provide the instant employment promise to jobless persons in the lowest-life-insurance families. In the 4th quarter, the central government will carry out special inspection to the local tasks of employment and reemployment. We should make efforts to ensure the target accomplishment of the employment posts increasing and the unemployment rate control.

2) Further implement the policies of employment promotion, and give more support. Together with intensifying the employment promotion accountability of governments at all levels, we should guild and encourage the workers to apply for employment themselves in the market with the support policies. In the national symposium, more support policies of employment and reemployment have been put forward, and some quite favorite policies have been published in the first half of this year. In the next step, we should carry out the national and municipal support policies of employment promotion completely. With the implementation of tax reduction and social insurance subsidiary policies, we should encourage the enterprises to hire the laid-off workers; with the implementation of small amount loan and tax reduction policies, we should support the development of mini-size enterprises and non-official labor organizations and encourage the laid-off workers to feed themselves. Currently, we should improve the employment guidance to help the college students to build up proper concept of job selection, inspire them to start up their own business, and encourage them to take up the grass-root jobs.

3) Further improve the employment training to make it adaptable to the needs of labor force market. It¡¯s necessary to improve the reemployment training to help the laid-off workers to be more competitive for reemployment. We should carry out the various and all-round reemployment training in compliance with the market needs and the actual situation of laid-off workers, so as to improve the pertinence, practicability and effectiveness of training. Meanwhile, we should promote the implementation of¡°Skill development plan¡±with the focus on the middle-level or senior professional training in order to improve remarkably the fostering of technical workers, especially the senior technical workers or technicians and build the technical team with high quality and composite knowledge base.

4) Promote proactively the implementation of social insurance system in small-size town, and help with the employment of excessive rural labor force. We should combine the employment promotion with the improvement of social security system to build the positive system of employment security and promotion. Shanghai CPC Committee and Shanghai Municipal Government have made decision to fully implement the social insurance in small-size town as one of the basic social insurance system in suburb area. It¡¯s not only an important action to improve the social security system, but also positive to help with the employment of excessive rural labor force and the urban-rural employment mobilization. The related departments should further improve the implementation details, organize the implementation carefully, and make efforts to achieve full coverage of¡°town insurance¡±before the end of this year. Meanwhile, we should further improve the rural employment service network to include all the excessive rural labor force into the arrangement of whole municipal policies of employment promotion and provide more non-rural work opportunities.

The Shanghai government 2006