Hu Jinglin told China Newsweek, "Apart from tax rebates and transfer payments to local governments, the majority of the 3400 billion central government budget will be used to improve the well-being of the people." He added that the government will increase spending on agriculture, education, social security, health care and environmental protection.
Agriculture:
The greatest increase is in the allocation to support agriculture, rural areas and farmers, Hu said, adding that expenditure will rise to a record high of 562.5 billion yuan, an increase of 130.7 billion yuan, or 30.3 percent, over last year.
The aim of this investment is to encourage farmers and local governments to plant more crops.
Education:
The central government has allocated 156.176 billion yuan to education, an increase of 45.1 percent. Last year 36.48 billion yuan from the central budget and 32.3 billion yuan from local budgets were spent to exempt rural students from tuition and miscellaneous fees for compulsory education, provide free textbooks, and give living allowances to boarding students from poor families. These measures benefited 150 million rural students receiving compulsory education and 7.8 million students from poor families living on campus.
According to Hu, a total of 57.04 billion yuan, an increase of 20.56 billion yuan, has been allocated to guarantee the operating expenses of rural compulsory education. 22.3 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5 billion yuan, has been allocated to fully fund assistance to students from poor families attending undergraduate institutions, vocational colleges and secondary vocational schools. The central government will spend 8.4 billion yuan on trials to exempt urban students from paying tuition and miscellaneous fees for compulsory education beginning in the 2008 fall school term.