Education, science and technology, and human resources are the foundational and strategic pillars for building a modern socialist country in all respects. We must regard science and technology as our primary productive force, talent as our primary resource, and innovation as our primary driver of growth. We will fully implement the strategy for invigorating China through science and education, the workforce development strategy, and the innovation-driven development strategy. We will open up new areas and new arenas in development and steadily foster new growth drivers and new strengths.
We will continue to give high priority to the development of education, build China’s self-reliance and strength in science and technology, and rely on talent to pioneer and to propel development. We will speed up work to build a strong educational system, greater scientific and technological strength, and a quality workforce. We will continue efforts to cultivate talent for the Party and the country and comprehensively improve our ability to nurture talent at home. All this will see us producing first-class innovators and attracting the brightest minds from all over.
1. Developing education that meets the people’s expectations
Education is of critical importance to the future of our country and our Party. What kind of people we should cultivate, how, and for whom—these are the fundamental issues that education must address.
The most basic aim of education is to foster virtue. We will fully implement the Party’s educational policy, carry out the basic task of fostering virtue through education, and nurture a new generation of capable young people with sound moral grounding, intellectual ability, physical vigor, aesthetic sensibility, and work skills who will fully develop socialism and carry forward the socialist cause.
We will continue to follow a people-centered approach to developing education, move faster to build a high-quality educational system, advance students’ well-rounded development, and promote fairness in education. We will accelerate high-quality, balanced development and urban-rural integration in compulsory education. We will better allocate educational resources across regions, strengthen public-benefit preschool education and special needs education, ensure the diversified development of senior secondary schools, and improve the financial aid system so it covers students at all stages of schooling.
We will promote collaborative innovation in vocational education, higher education, and continuing education and promote integration between vocational education and general education, between industry and education, and between science and education. We will better establish vocational education as a category in the educational system. We will do more to develop basic disciplines, emerging disciplines, and interdisciplinary subjects and speed up the development of world-class universities and strong disciplines with Chinese features. We will better guide and regulate the development of private schools.
We will intensify efforts to promote standard spoken and written Chinese. We will advance comprehensive reform in education, strengthen the creation and management of teaching materials, refine the systems for school management and educational assessments, and improve mechanisms for school-family-society collaboration in education.
We will strengthen the professional integrity, conduct, and ability of our teachers, foster public respect for educators, and encourage public support for education. We will promote the digitalization of education and build a society and country of learning where lifelong learning is pursued by all.
2. Improving systems for scientific and technological innovation
Innovation will remain at the heart of China’s modernization drive. We will improve the system in which the Party Central Committee exercises unified leadership over science and technology work. We will improve the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to make key technological breakthroughs. We will boost China’s strength in strategic science and technology, better allocate innovation resources, and better define the roles of national research institutes, advanced-level research universities, and leading high-tech enterprises to improve their layout. We will establish a system of national laboratories, coordinate the development of international and regional centers for scientific and technological innovation, enhance basic scientific and technological capacity, and ensure better strategic input from the science and technology sector, so as to boost the overall performance of China’s innovation system.
We will deepen structural scientific and technological reform and reform of the system for appraisal of scientific and technological advances. We will increase investment in science and technology through diverse channels and strengthen legal protection of intellectual property rights, in order to establish a foundational system for all-around innovation. We will nurture a culture of innovation, encourage dedication to science, cultivate fine academic conduct, and foster an enabling environment for innovation.
We will expand science and technology exchanges and cooperation with other countries, cultivate an internationalized environment for research, and create an open and globally-competitive innovation ecosystem.
3. Accelerating the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy
Setting our sights on the global frontiers of science and technology, national economic development, the major needs of the country, and the health and safety of the people, we should speed up efforts to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology.
To meet China’s strategic needs, we will concentrate resources on original and pioneering scientific and technological research to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields. In order to enhance China’s innovation capacity, we will move faster to launch a number of major national projects that are of strategic, big-picture, and long-term importance. We will strengthen basic research, prioritize original innovation, and encourage researchers to engage in free exploration.
To inspire greater creativity, we will invest more effectively in science and technology and advance reform of the mechanisms for the allocation and use of government research funds. We will promote closer enterprise-led collaboration between industries, universities, and research institutes, stay goal-oriented, and promote the industrial application of scientific and technological advances. We will reinforce the principal role of enterprises in innovation, give full play to the guiding and supporting role of key high-tech enterprises, create an enabling environment for the growth of micro, small, and medium technological enterprises, and promote deeper integration of the innovation, industrial, capital, and talent chains.
4. Implementing the workforce development strategy
Cultivating a large workforce of high-quality talent who have both integrity and professional competence is of critical importance to the long-term development of China and the Chinese nation. A wealth of talent is vital to the success of a great cause. We should follow the principle of the Party managing talent, and we should respect work, knowledge, talent, and creativity. We will adopt more proactive, open, and effective policies on talent and encourage our talent to love the Party, dedicate themselves to the country and contribute to its cause, and serve the people. We will improve the strategic distribution of human resources and make concerted efforts to cultivate talented people in all fields, so as to create a large, well-structured, and high-quality workforce.
We will move faster to build world hubs for talent and innovation, promote better distribution and balanced development of talent across regions, and strive to build up our comparative strengths in global competition for talent. We will speed up efforts to build a contingent of personnel with expertise of strategic importance and cultivate greater numbers of master scholars, science strategists, first-class scientists and innovation teams, young scientists, outstanding engineers, master craftsmen, and highly-skilled workers.
We will increase international personnel exchanges and make the best use of talent of all types to fully harness their potential. We will further reform the systems and mechanisms for talent development and ensure we value talented people, nurture them, attract them, and put them to good use. No effort should be spared and no rigid boundaries drawn in the endeavor to bring together the best and the brightest from all fields for the cause of the Party and the people.
