China's first social work commission was officially established yesterday. The Beijing Social Work Committee has pledged to resolve a series of social problems, the Beijing News reported.

Ding Xiangyang, Beijing's vice mayor, claimed that the establishment of this institution would have far-reaching revolutionary significance.

Song Guilun, the newly appointed Secretary of the Social Work Committee, told the press that Beijing's existing social management systems and social construction are insufficient and therefore could not meet the needs to develop modern society. Many problems have arisen in the fields of education, medicare, culture and civil affairs.

According to Song, the newly established Social Work Committee has many purposes: to improve ordinary people's livelihoods; to work out development plans for Beijing's social construction; to map out policies to deal with employment and medical service problems; and to organize and coordinate work relating to livelihood between government institutions so as to formulate effective, balanced policies.

The Beijing Social Work Committee (also called Beijing Social Construction Work Office) will be in charge of the unified management of community construction, new economic organizations and new social organizations. Song said that new economic organizations and new social organizations have been developing very quickly. The end of 2006 saw 1.095 million of them already registered in Beijing.

Meanwhile Beijing's municipal functions are constantly expanding. The city has now 2,500 communities; some loopholes in the management of these communities currently exist.

The Social Work Committee will act as a kind of "chief manager" for these organizations and communities.

Yesterday, seven institutional leaders made a collective public appearance. The new institution plans to publicly recruit six more high level leading cadres.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Ming'ai, December 3, 2007)