On Thursday, China released its first development plan for ethnic minority groups. During the 11th Five-Year Plan period, China aims to carry out 11 main tasks, finish 11 major projects, and achieve 6 development targets.

The 11 main tasks are to: improve the infrastructure in national autonomous regions to help develop the economy, solve problems, fulfill the wishes of the local people, promote education and the development of science and technology, improve medical and health services, develop cultural undertakings, increase social welfare, guide talented individuals in the community, further open up the ethnic minority and autonomous regions, perfect laws and the theoretical policy system, and build a harmonious environment for all nationalities.

The 11 major projects are to: lift minority groups out of poverty, help develop fundamental education, establish universities in the community, develop traditional medicines of these ethnic groups, develop their culture, cultivate talented people, establish laws, facilitate exchanges and cooperation between minorities and foreign citizens, establish an information-based system to manage their, study their current situation, and establish a service system to deal with national affairs.

The six targets are: by 2010, to bring the annual growth rate of the per capita disposable income of urban residents and the per capita net income of rural residents up to 6 percent; to raise the penetration rate in the population for nine-year compulsory education to 95 percent; to reduce the infant mortality rate by five percent from 2005 levels; increase the number of publications and printings by 20 percent and 25 percent from 2005 levels; to bring the proportion of talented employed workers belonging to ethnic minorities to 9 percent; and to increase the size of the urban population in autonomous regions to account for 28 percent of the region's people.

By People's Daily Online