Expanding the Middle-Income Group*

May 16, 2016

Expanding the middle-income group is key to realizing a moderately prosperous society. It is also an indispensable requirement of transformation of the growth model, reform of economic structure, and maintenance of social harmony, stability and long-lasting national peace.

To expand the middle-income group, we should adhere to high-quality and high-return development and maintain macroeconomic stability, allowing us to lay the foundation of higher standards of living. We must carry forward the tenet of prosperity through hard work, and encourage people to follow it.

We must improve the income distribution system. Based on the system in which distribution according to work is dominant and a variety of modes of distribution coexist, we should balance the distribution between government, enterprises and individuals through combining distribution according to work with distribution according to factors of production.

Human capital should be strengthened through investing more in this sector, so as to improve education quality and establish a modern vocational education system.

We should give full play to the role of entrepreneurs by helping them address difficulties related to their enterprises, solving their problems, and ensuring that their input of various factors generates corresponding profits.

More must be done to protect property rights and improve the modern property rights system. The protection of ownership, management rights, and corporate property rights of state-owned assets should be enhanced. We should strengthen people's sense of property security by further protecting the property rights of the non-state sector and intellectual property rights.

* Main points of the speech at the 13th meeting of the Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs under the CPC Central Committee.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)