STATE PLEDGES TO SUPPORT INNER MONGOLIA

The State Council, or China's cabinet, held a high-profile meeting on June 15 to discuss policies that will boost the overall development of Inner Mongolia, pledging to lift living standards for local residents and maintain social stability.

The meeting, presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao, said the central government has pledged to raise incomes for urban and rural residents in Inner Mongolia up to the national average by 2020.

The region's comprehensive economic power should be enhanced and living conditions for farmers and herders should be markedly improved, the cabinet said, ordering government departments and agencies to work out stronger supporting polices to back the region in terms of industrial development, taxation, financing and investment. [ The cabinet also said that Inner Mongolia's total forest coverage should increase to 21.5 percent by 2015, and that its grassland coverage should increase to 43 percent.