Minister of Finance Lan Fo'an: Greater emphasis will be placed on promoting the stable operation of grassroots public finance and on preventing and defusing local government debt risks.

Finance Minister Lan Fo'an published an article in Qiushi Journal, stating that greater emphasis will be placed on safeguarding people's livelihoods and improving public service standards. We will continue to strengthen capacity building for disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief, promptly allocate central disaster relief funds, and support the resettlement of affected people, basic living security, and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. We will make good use of policies such as unemployment insurance stable-job rebates, job expansion subsidies, and skills improvement subsidies, improve the social security system, implement policies such as raising the basic pension for urban and rural residents, and promote high-quality full employment and household income growth. Adapting to changes in population structure and mobility trends, we will advance the optimized layout of basic public services such as education and medical care, make them portable and able to follow people, and better meet the expectations of the people. We will implement regularized targeted assistance, carry out corresponding bottom-line guarantee and development-oriented assistance measures, and firmly uphold the bottom line of preventing large-scale return to poverty or new poverty. Greater emphasis will be placed on promoting the stable operation of grassroots public finances and preventing and defusing local government debt risks. We will advance the shift of the consumption tax collection stage backward and its steady transfer to local governments, reform of local surtaxes, and other measures to support localities in expanding tax sources. We will solidly advance pilot programs for integrating and coordinating the use of transfer payment funds, giving localities more autonomy and better meeting practical needs. Localities will be urged to strengthen treasury fund scheduling and operation monitoring to ensure that the "three guarantees" are not compromised. We will accelerate the resolution of existing hidden debts, seriously investigate and punish illegal and irregular acts such as new hidden debts and false debt resolution, and consolidate the hard-won results of debt resolution. We will promote the reform and transformation of local government financing platforms in a classified and orderly manner, resolutely strip them of government financing functions, and strictly prohibit the establishment of new financing platforms or the creation of various financing platforms through disguised means. Greater emphasis will be placed on advancing scientific fiscal management and continuously improving the efficiency of fiscal fund use. We will promote scientific fiscal management from point to area and toward deeper development, and further improve a management system that extends horizontally to all sides and vertically to the bottom. We will increase the coordination of fiscal resources and budgets, guide localities in standardizing and orderly revitalizing existing assets and resources, and better concentrate fiscal resources to accomplish major tasks. We will continue to deepen zero-based budgeting reform, further expand the pilot scope of central departments, guide localities in deepening exploration, and promote the establishment of a budget allocation mechanism that ensures what should be guaranteed, cuts what should be cut, allows increases and decreases, and adjusts dynamically. We will improve the whole-process budget performance management mechanism, comprehensively strengthen ex-ante performance evaluation, in-process performance monitoring, and ex-post performance assessment, and continuously improve the efficiency of fiscal expenditure. We will strictly implement the requirement that Party and government organs habitually practice austerity, save wherever possible in budget execution, strictly and tightly manage overseas trips on official business, domestic inspection and exchange visits, official receptions, meetings and training, and effectively reduce administrative operating costs and eliminate extravagance and waste. We will carry out in depth the three-year action to improve the quality and effectiveness of accounting oversight, and seriously investigate and punish violations of financial and economic discipline.