At the opening of the third session of the 12th Beijing People's Congress this morning (January 24) in Beijing Wang Qishan was explicit about the development achievements made in 2004 in the areas of economy and society in Beijing.

Reviewing the past year, we are sober-minded to see that it is at the initial stage that the scientific viewpoint of development has been implemented in Beijing. It is necessary to have continuous and in-depth understanding of the "five balances'' -- balancing urban and rural development, balancing regional development, balancing the economic and social development, balancing the harmonious development of human and nature, and balancing domestic development and opening up to the outside world and to make repeated researches on the balancing in practice. There exist comparatively big gaps in six areas in Beijing if compared with the requirements for holding a high-level Olympic games with characteristics and for ranking top in all areas in the country.

He said the first of the six gaps is: Beijing is more restricted to the resources including water, land and energy sources with low utilization efficiency. There is not a moment to be lost in changing the way of economic growth.

Second, the economic system reform in Beijing is lagging behind other areas relatively with bigger gaps existed in soft development environment; it is urgent to solve the leftover problems in attracting investment; and there is a slow progress in the combination of social undertaking resources and distribution adjustment.

Third, with the speed-up of urbanization it is more difficult for urban management while the problem of putting emphasis on construction above management is still not solved; it is an arduous task to deal with environmental pollution, traffic congestion and disordered environment; there exists a serious situation in production safety and social public security; there is a great difficulty in balancing and coordinating the protection of the old city appearance, population redistribution, dilapidated building transformation with weak points on the management of floating population; and the urban management needs to be improved.

Fourth, there are many challenges in building a harmonious socialist society in Beijing: contradictions in employment structure, obvious income gaps existed between areas, industries and social groups; unstable foundation for farmers' income increase; difficult life for low-income groups; the contradictions in requisitioned land and house demolition cannot be overlooked in urban construction; public security problems in some areas with more crimes in violation of laws; and mass-threatening events are on the increase.

Fifth, it is necessary to improve the social awareness in abiding by the laws and social morality and to promote cultural and ideological progress.

Sixth, the transformation of the government functions has not been finished yet with weakness in the basic work and with low work efficiency; very few officials seek private gain through power and become corruptible.

Wang Qishan said in his report we should pay high attention to the above-mentioned problems and settle them in an earnest way.

By People's Daily Online