All Political Bureau members of CPC Central Committee must improve their investigation and research work. At grassroots level, they must uncover real stories, draw experiences, and help solve people’s problems and offer guidelines. They should learn from the public and expose themselves to practice. They must increase dialogue with the public and officials. They should analyze typical situations and pay more visits to areas experiencing public difficulties and conflict. They must help solve problems and get rid of formalism. They should reduce their entourages and use fewer vehicles. There should be no welcoming banners, red carpets, welcoming public, floral decorations or banquets during their visits.

Meetings

Meetings must be simplified. There should be strict restrictions on the convening of national conferences and major activities in the name of the CPC Central Committee. Meetings focused on general arrangements and requirements should be cancelled. Leaders are not to attend ribbon-cutting or celebration ceremonies, symposiums, forums or activities of similar type without the approval of the CPC Central Committee. Meetings should be shortened with a view to improve efficiency.

Writing Style

We must cut and simplify official documents. Documents without tangible content must not be issued.

Overseas Visits

A frugal lifestyle must be followed in overseas visits. Leaders should cut spending and reduce entourages while complying with regulations on housing and vehicles. In general terms, no Chinese agencies or local residents of Chinese origin or Chinese students should be asked to the airport for welcoming and seeing off purposes.

Security

It is necessary to improve security by sticking to the principle of making it convenient to the people. Traffic controls should be reduced and there should be no action to empty venues.

News Reporting

It is necessary to improve news reporting. Whether to report on the activities and conferences attended by leaders of the Political Bureau of CPC Central Committee should depend on whether these are of actual need, real news value and social effect. Reports of this kind should be further condensed in terms of quantity and length.

Documents

Personnel are not allowed to openly publish books or separate editions of speech, unless the CPC Central Committee approves. Personnel should not send congratulatory letters, give epigraphs or inscriptions.

Frugality

Leaders must follow a frugal lifestyle and relevant regulations on clean governance. They must strictly comply with regulations on housing, vehicles and living.

The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a conference on December 4, discussing eight regulations set to improve the Party’s work ethic, to better connect it to the people, and to research economic workings for the year 2013. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, hosted the event.

It was stressed at the conference that the work ethic of leaders, particularly at senior level, has a critical impact on the Party, government and overall social atmosphere. The Political Bureau should take a lead. If you want others to do well, you must first do well yourself; and if you want to dissuade others from doing something, you should first refrain from doing it. A good work ethic throughout the Party will have a positive affect. When we perform well, we will win real credit and support from people. Thus, we must make great efforts to improve the Party’s working practice and help solve public problems, so as to keep a close relationship with the masses of people.

To work out these regulations and guiding principles, the Party means to manage itself in a strict way. The success of the Party and that of the people depends on the improvement of our work ethic and our proximity to the public. The Party and government departments at various levels must take the lead in improving working practices, conducting investigations at grassroots level, mingling with the people and solving actual difficulties. These regulations must be followed in accordance with the situation on the ground. More importantly, we need good methods to put these regulations into practice so they can benefit everyone. Departments at all levels are required to execute these regulations strictly. At the end of the year, there will be an assessment on how these jobs were done. The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council must urge assessment on a regular basis. The result will be made known at the end of the year within the Party and reported to the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Violation of these regulations will be punished. Disciplinary watchdogs at various levels must make the supervision of the regulation implementation a regular job. Auditing departments must make an annual inspection on conference expenses by various departments at various levels.

Since 2012, in the face of sluggish world economic recovery and domestic downturn, under the correct leadership of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, the Chinese economy is growing stably, with an increase of positive factors. The whole year’s economic and social development tasks have been properly fulfilled. These achievements attributed to the fact that local departments at all levels stick to the scientific outlook on development and accelerate the economic development mode. In accordance with overall economic climate and working in a stable manner, they further strengthened and improved macro-control policy, stressing stable growth, structural readjustment, reform and the improvement of people’s lives. China is experiencing an important strategic period of opportunities and still has a lot to achieve. The upcoming year of 2013 presents many favorable and positive factors for China’s economic and social development. However, the country’s economic growth faces many difficulties and challenges that cannot be underestimated. The whole Party and the whole country should increase its efforts to deal with crisis and hardship.

It was pointed out at the conference that 2013 will be the first year for the thorough implementation of the Party’s 18th National Congress spirit and also a key transitional period for the implementation of the “12th Five-Year” Plan. It will be an important year to lay a solid foundation for the overall development of a Xiaokang society. As the year will be essential for China’s economic outlook, we must study and fully implement the spirit of the 18th CPC National Congress, with the guiding principle of Deng Xiaoping Theory, “Three Represents” and Scientific Outlook on Development. We must focus on the quality and efficiency of economic growth and try to make progress in stability. Innovation and creativity is very important in deepening the reform and opening up. We should make efforts to expand domestic demand and accelerate strategic adjustment of economic structure. We should improve people’s lives, strengthen the inner driving force of economic development and keep prices basically stable, thus achieving sustainable and sound development of economy alongside social harmony and stability.

The conference stressed we must keep macro-control policy continuity and stability. There should be moderate adjustment of the policy to make it work more effectively and specifically. Polices should be well coordinated. Domestic demand must be boosted by nurturing new programs of strong consumption demand. It is important to promote the stable growth of investments and structural optimization. The blind expansion of industries of high pollution and high energy consumption and of overcapacity must be curbed. We should continue to do a good job in agricultural development by fully implementing various supportive polices, increasing relevant inputs and encouraging the development of a new model of agricultural production and operation. Agricultural irrigation and disaster prevention as well as relief are also important. The pace of industrial transformation and updating should be accelerated. Independent innovation should be encouraged to push forward structural adjustment. We should support enterprises to take the lead in major scientific and technological programs, clear industrial targets, mergers and reorganization of industries with overcapacity, support the good and eliminate the bad, support small and medium-sized industries, develop service sectors serving production and help to improve the environment. Active and stable efforts should be made to push forward urbanization and strengthen urban areas’ comprehensive capacity of receiving newcomers. It is important to save and use land in a more frugal way. Rural populations migrating into urban areas should become urbanized step by step. We should implement an overall strategy for regional development, accelerate the development of clustering poor areas and marine economy. We should open up wider to the outside world by optimizing foreign trade structure, stabilizing export policy and increasing imports. Enterprises should seize opportunities to explore business abroad. We should support the opening up of hinterland and boundary areas. We should keep commodity prices stable and further promote the balance of supply and demand of important commodities. The cost of circulation should be further lowered, while market prices and fee charging standards should be further standardized. Reform in key areas must be tangibly pushed forward. More regions and industries should be covered under the pilot program of replacing business tax with value added tax. The pricing mechanism for resource-based products must be improved. The reform of medical and health systems must be deepened. Development of state-owned economy and of rural areas must be advanced. Reform in science and technology, education, culture and administrative examination as well as approval procedures must be furthered. People’s living conditions must be further improved while the employment service system in both rural and urban areas should be further expanded. The quality of social security must be stably improved. Social causes like education, health and culture requires further development. More efforts should be made in property market control and security house construction. Social services and management must be strengthened to safeguard harmony and stability.

Other issues were also discussed at the conference.