Eighteen departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission ("NDRC"), have recently issued the Action Plan for Stepping up Efforts to Address Inadequacies, Improve Weak Areas and Boost Quality in Social Public Services to Facilitate the Formation of a Powerful Domestic Market (the "Plan").
The Plan reads that the year 2020 will see a more reasonable structure of public service supply, more active participation of social forces, a more thorough mechanism to safeguard the implementation, ever-growing quality and level of services, and stronger effects of public services in safeguarding people's livelihood, promoting employment and expanding consumption. The Plan sets out tasks in three aspects which are "addressing inadequacies in basic public services to balance essential public services as early as possible", "improving weak areas in non-basic public services to increase the supply of public services for the general public" and "giving full play to the roles of an effective market and a contributing government to boost the quality and level of public services". Among others, the Plan states that the level of public services in employment and entrepreneurship will be lifted by promoting all-round public employment services, developing a nationally unified public service platform for employment and entrepreneurship, and launching more preferential policies for public services in employment and entrepreneurship offered in poverty-stricken areas and rural areas.