State Council calls for efforts to help low-income people

The State Council, China's Cabinet, said on Tuesday that efforts should be made to better monitor the situation of the country's low-income population in order to provide them with more targeted, timely and effective social assistance.

According to an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Qiang, social assistance is a basic and fundamental arrangement of China's social security system.

To better secure people's basic needs for livelihood, it is necessary to speed up efforts in shaping a pattern that can provide comprehensive social assistance to different groups of people at all levels in an efficient way, the meeting decided.

Meeting participants urged governments at all levels to guarantee the basic living needs of people affected by disasters and other vulnerable groups, and distribute various types of benefits on time and in full, so that those in need can have safe and warm winter.

The meeting noted that providing elderly people with catering services is an important livelihood project and a significant initiative supporting elderly care services in residential communities and improving the well-being of seniors.

Efforts should be made to steadily develop catering services for the elderly according to local conditions and adopt measures to provide greater support for such services in rural areas, according to the meeting.

Attendees at the meeting also discussed patent transformation and utilization, saying that fully tapping the value of patents and vigorously developing patent-intensive industries is a strategic task for promoting the country's high-quality development.

They urged efforts to refine incentive policies, remove key barriers and cultivate a favorable market environment to facilitate patent transformation and utilization, thus accelerating the transformation of innovative results into productivity.

The meeting adopted a guideline on providing better social assistance to the low-income population, an action plan on providing catering services to the elderly people, and an action plan on patent transformation and utilization.