Li Zhiming: Expanding the Space for Development by Meeting People's Livelihood Needs
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the opening ceremony of a specialized seminar for major provincial and ministerial-level leading cadres on studying and implementing the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee: "Economic development and social development are complementary and must be coordinated and advanced in tandem. Improving people's lives must be the focus of promoting social development, steadily enhancing the quality of people's lives while developing the economy." Safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods during development is a major task of Chinese-path modernization. Many works in the first volume of Selected Economic Writings of Xi Jinping provide profound interpretations of this. For instance, "How to View and Manage the New Normal" points out: "We must continuously improve people's livelihoodsบน the basis of economic development, especially by increasing the quantity and quality of basic public services such as education and medical care, and promoting educational equity"; "Solidly Promoting Common Prosperity" notes: "Only by promoting common prosperity, increasing the income of urban and rural residents, and enhancing human capital can we improve total factor productivity and consolidate the dynamic foundation for high-quality development"; and so forth. These important discourses profoundly reveal the dialectical relationship between promoting economic development and safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods. Promoting economic development provides solid support and a stable guarantee for safeguarding and improving livelihoods, while safeguarding and improving livelihoods anchors the value orientation and expands the potential space for economic development. The two are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.
The "Suggestions" from the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee regarded "persisting in putting the people first" as a principle that must be followed during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period (2026–2030) for economic and social development, proposing to "focus on safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods during development, and expanding development space while satisfying livelihood needs." The Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year clarified the key tasks for this year's economic work, including "persisting in people's livelihoods as the priority and striving to perform more practical deeds for the masses." To implement the decision-making arrangements of the Party Central Committee, we must take the benefit of the people as the fundamental value orientation, persist in safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods during development, and open up a new realm of high-quality development through the protection and improvement of livelihoods.
Livelihood demands provide endogenous momentum for promoting high-quality development
In "Adhering to the People-Centered Development Philosophy and Advancing the Process of Comprehensively Building a Moderately Prosperous Society," General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Advancing the construction of a moderately prosperous society [1] starting from solving prominent problems of common concern to the masses conforms to the requirements of supply-side structural reform and is conducive to creating new growth points and improving long-term growth potential. Supply formed by starting from the actual and potential needs of the masses has a foundation." This important discourse accurately elucidates the promotional role of livelihood demands in high-quality development. The people’s aspiration for a better life embodies both the value goal of livelihood work and the power engine of economic development. Entering the New Era, the principal contradiction in Chinese society has transformed [2]; livelihood demands have shifted from "whether there is" to "how good it is," leaping from survival and material-oriented needs toward development and quality-oriented needs. This iterative upgrade of the demand structure not only clarifies the direction for safeguarding and improving livelihoods but also becomes an important force for promoting industrial transformation and upgrading and shaping new drivers of development, opening vast space for high-quality development.
In the field of health, the concept of proactive health has catalyzed a new industrial paradigm. Health is the foundation of a happy life for the people and a fundamental condition for economic and social development. One of the most important indicators of modernization is people's health, which is also an inevitable requirement for promoting the well-rounded development of individuals. As China's level of economic and social development rises, the health awareness of the masses has increased, and health demands have shifted from "disease treatment" to "full-lifecycle protection," driving the rapid development of the "Great Health" [3] industry. Data shows that the scale of China’s health industry has expanded steadily in recent years and will continue to do so in the future, playing an important role in stimulating economic growth. Various localities have promoted the innovative development of the health industry based on their own advantages, forming a batch of vivid practices. Zhejiang, relying on the construction of a "Health Brain," has achieved real-time data interconnection among public medical institutions at or above the secondary level and primary-level medical institutions across the province, mutually recognizing hundreds of medical examination items; this saves medical expenses for the masses while driving the rapid development of the digital medical industry. Jiangsu has built exercise-driven health promotion institutions covering urban and rural areas, promoting the deep integration of fitness/leisure with medical services. Furthermore, on the consumption side, sub-sectors of the health industry such as home medical equipment and online fitness platforms have grown rapidly, further driving innovation and upgrading in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, building a virtuous cycle where "demand drives innovation, and innovation leads consumption."
In the field of elderly care, the needs of the "silver-haired group" have illuminated a new "blue ocean" [4] for industry. In recent years, China’s population aging has been rapid. By the end of 2025, China's population aged 65 and over will exceed 220 million, accounting for 15.9% of the total population. Currently, the elderly group’s demand for care services is shifting from traditional "survival security" to modern "quality of life," with diversified, differentiated, and personalized needs becoming increasingly vigorous and urgent. Providing precise services through grading and classification based on the needs of the elderly, and incorporating the care of disabled elderly people as a focus of the elderly care service system construction, can better meet livelihood needs while containing huge development opportunities. Various localities have built elderly care service networks of "institution-community-home" by using the deep integration of aging-friendly renovation and "smart elderly care" as a point of leverage, achieving "resonance at the same frequency" between livelihood protection and industrial development. Beijing launched the "Time Bank" [5] mutual-aid elderly care model, effectively activating the endogenous power of community elderly care through the storage and exchange of volunteer service hours, solving the problem of insufficient professional supply to a certain extent. Shanghai focused on the "digital divide" pain point of the elderly, promoting convenient services such as "one-click taxi hailing" and "remote health monitoring," which have become important components of smart city construction. In addition, new business forms such as "sojourn elderly care" [6] and "cultural elderly care" are flourishing, the special food market is growing rapidly, and breakthroughs in R&D for smart equipment in the field of disability care continue. These vivid practices fully demonstrate the strong driving effect of elderly care service demand on industrial upgrading, building a virtuous cycle of "livelihood improvement – industrial upgrading – service quality enhancement."
In the field of housing, quality demand is leading a new leap in the "spatial revolution." Having a place to live is an important part of the people's aspiration for a better life. By the end of 2025, China’s permanent resident urbanization rate will reach 67.89%. Urbanization is shifting toward a stable development period, and urban development is moving from a stage of large-scale incremental expansion to a stage focused on improving the quality and efficiency of the existing stock. In this process, China’s housing development has shifted from "whether there is" to "how good it is," and housing construction is transforming from "having a place to live" to "living in excellence." In line with this trend, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period (2021–2025), more than 240,000 old urban residential communities were renovated nationwide; aging-friendly and barrier-free facility renovations were implemented in 56,000 communities; more than 28 million square meters of new cultural, leisure, and physical fitness venues were added; and 64,000 community service facilities for elderly and childcare were increased, greatly enhancing the residential quality for inhabitants. As the site where the masses establish their lives, housing quality and safety are of vital importance. Guided by green and smart transformations, in 2024, the area of new green buildings in urban areas accounted for 97.9% of the total new urban building area for that year; smart home applications are gradually becoming popular, and the quality of housing supply has significantly improved. Various localities have conducted characteristic explorations based on urban positioning, forming diversified paths for quality housing development. Shenzhen, Guangdong, addressing the issue of scarce land resources, promoted "Industry Upstairs" projects, achieving high-efficiency unification of industrial upgrading and space utilization through high plot-ratio designs and composite functional layouts. Chengdu, Sichuan, has continuously promoted the construction of the Park City Demonstration Zone, strengthening the construction of park green spaces and community greenways, transforming ecological advantages into residential quality advantages. These practices have accurately responded to the masses' demand for quality housing while promoting the upgrading of urban functions and the optimization of industrial structures, achieving a double leap in livelihood improvement and urban development.
On the whole, changes in resident consumption demand have given rise to a large number of new industries, business formats, and models, which both expand development space and shape new drivers of development. Different from extensive growth, demand-driven development exhibits a distinct endogenous and sustainable nature. This is both an important feature of high-quality development and a key focus for safeguarding and improving people’s lives during development.
High-quality development consolidates the foundation for safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in "Jointly Promoting Global Development Toward a New Stage of Balance, Coordination, and Inclusiveness" that "development is the key to achieving people's happiness"; and in "China's Economy Has Shifted from a High-Speed Growth Stage to a High-Quality Development Stage," he noted: "High-quality development is development that can well satisfy the people's ever-growing needs for a better life." Enhancing livelihood well-being is not a castle in the air; it must be built on a solid foundation. High-quality development is precisely the key to consolidating this foundation. In safeguarding and improving livelihoods while promoting high-quality development, it is necessary to handle the relationship between efficiency and equity well. It is necessary to persist in the unification of winning through quality and leveraging scale effects, consolidating the foundation of people's happiness by continuously making the "cake" bigger, but also to divide the "cake" well, so that the fruits of reform and development reach all people more extensively and fairly, stimulating the vitality to further enlarge the "cake."
To promote high-quality development, we must improve the quality and efficiency of economic development through deepening reform and innovation-driven strategies, producing more and better material and spiritual products to continuously meet the increasing material and cultural needs of the people. In practice, we implement the new development philosophy, promote the construction of the new development pattern, implement supply-side structural reform, and formulate a series of major regional strategies of global significance, continuously promoting changes in the quality, efficiency, and drivers of economic development, with high-quality development progressing solidly. For example, the accessibility of infrastructure and the support of industrial facilities are both manifestations of the effectiveness of high-quality development and provide a multi-dimensional protection network for increasing livelihood well-being. In the field of transportation, the national high-speed railway operating mileage exceeds 50,000 kilometers, weaving a rapid transportation network running north-south and east-west, making "returning from Jiangling, a thousand miles away, in a single day" [7] a reality; the technical grade and pavement quality of rural roads have significantly improved, with the proportion of graded roads continuously increasing, not only connecting villages and cities but also clearing the channels for agricultural products to reach larger markets, allowing mountain specialties to reach markets directly and "fattening the wallets" of farmers. In the field of telecommunications, 5G networks have covered 95% of administrative villages, and the construction of "Digital Countryside" continues to deepen, driving a continuous rise in rural online retail sales and farmer incomes; the masses in remote areas can enjoy distance education and online medical services through a single mobile phone, sharing the development dividends of the digital age. These vivid practices all allow the achievements of high-quality development in the New Era to be transformed into practical livelihood deeds that the masses can perceive and access.
To promote high-quality development, we must be guided by the philosophy of shared development, persist in development for the people, development relying on the people, and development fruits shared by the people, better safeguarding social fairness and justice, and solidly promoting common prosperity for all. In practice, we continuously improve the basic socialist economic system, speed up the improvement of the social fairness protection system mainly composed of fairness in rights, opportunities, and rules, and build a multi-party investment mechanism characterized by government coordination and guidance, active market force, and extensive social synergy. We promote the leap of livelihood protection from "whether there is" (baseline supply) to "how good it is" (quality upgrade). For example, in the field of social security, we have utilized big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other modern information technology means to build a unified, efficient, compatible, convenient, and secure national medical insurance information platform. This has promoted the expansion of direct settlement across provinces from hospitalization to general outpatient services and 10 types of chronic and special outpatient diseases, benefiting more insured personnel and letting floating populations [8] feel more at ease about medical reimbursement. In the field of housing, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China has constructed and collected more than 11 million units (rooms) of various types of subsidized housing and resettlement housing for the renovation of urban villages and dilapidated urban houses, benefiting more than 30 million people. The masses' sense of gain, happiness, and security has significantly improved; more "new citizens" [9] and young people not only "have a house to live in" but also "live well." In terms of the equalization of basic public services, China has continued to promote the standardization of basic public services, breaking the restrictions of household registration (hukou) and geography. Whether they are urban residents or rural masses, they can enjoy roughly equivalent services in education, medical care, culture, and other fields. The dual empowerment of material support and institutional protection has achieved the organic unity of development quality and the "warmth" of livelihood, solidly promoting common prosperity for all people.
Practice has fully proved that only by unswervingly promoting high-quality development can we continuously consolidate the material basis for safeguarding and improving livelihoods, ensure the people's rights to equal participation and equal development, let all people move steadily forward on the road to common prosperity, and ensure that Chinese-path modernization is always full of warmth and strength.
Forming a virtuous cycle of promoting economic development and safeguarding and improving people’s livelihoods
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in "Comprehensively Promoting the Great Cause of Building a Strong Country and National Rejuvenation with Chinese-path Modernization" that:
"Chinese-path modernization must both create higher efficiency than capitalism and more effectively maintain social fairness, better achieving the integration, mutual promotion, and unity of efficiency and fairness." The upgrading of levels and optimization of structures in people’s livelihood needs provide vast space for industrial iteration and upgrading, while the improvement of quality and efficiency in industrial development provides solid support for the improvement of people’s livelihoods. To expand the space for development while meeting livelihood needs, it is necessary to construct a virtuous cycle of "industrial development—improvement of people’s livelihoods—consumption upgrading—industrial development." This is a vivid practice of the people-centered development philosophy; it both reflects the fundamental purpose of development and reveals its internal laws.
The Central Economic Work Conference [10] held at the end of last year required that we "increase the intensity of securing and improving people's livelihoods around the continuous enhancement of their well-being," pointing the way forward for our commitment to securing and improving people’s livelihoods within the context of development. Currently, China's development has entered a period where strategic opportunities coexist with risks and challenges, and where uncertain and unpredictable factors are increasing. The economy is at a critical juncture of "climbing the slope and crossing the ridge" [11] toward high-quality development, and the people's needs for a better life are growing daily and becoming more extensive. This further requires us to grasp the dialectical unity between economic development and the improvement of people's livelihoods and adhere to systems thinking [12]. We must satisfy the diverse needs of the masses through targeted policies to release consumption potential and expand industrial space, while simultaneously strengthening the momentum of development through industrial upgrading to enhance the quality and level of livelihood security. We must exert collaborative efforts in accurately docking with needs, strengthening policy support, and stimulating developmental vitality. This will promote a vivid situation where the two facilitate and advance each other in a "spiral rise," activating the endogenous power of high-quality development and expanding its broad space. This ensures that the fruits of reform and development benefit all people more extensively and equitably, writing a warm and substantial "livelihood answer sheet" on the new journey of building a strong country and national rejuvenation.
Accurately docking with people's livelihood needs means transforming "what the masses hope for" into "what development works on." Livelihood needs possess both diversity and hierarchy, ranging from basic subsistence security to the pursuit of quality of life, and from inclusive public services to personalized consumption experiences, exhibiting distinct characteristics of diversification and individualization. This requires shifting livelihood services from "flood irrigation" [13] style extensive supply to "precision drip irrigation" style targeted supply. We must lead new supply with new demand and create new demand with new supply, promoting a virtuous interaction between consumption and investment, and supply and demand. To this end, we must conduct frontline research by going deep into communities, villages, and enterprises to accurately capture pain points and difficulties in fields such as education, medical care, elderly care, housing, and employment. At the same time, we must be adept at mining growth points for industrial development from these needs, finding the optimal junction between livelihood improvement and industrial upgrading, and opening new space for development by insisting on the synergistic effort and dynamic balance of both the supply and demand sides.
Strengthening policy synergy and support will promote the "resonance at the same frequency" of livelihood improvement and economic development. Constructing a virtuous cycle that promotes the mutual reinforcement of economic development and livelihood improvement cannot be achieved without the systematic design and collaborative force of macro policies. As important regulatory tools, macro policies must both hold the "bottom line" [14] of livelihood security—promoting the equalization of basic public services so the masses can share the fruits of reform and development—and raise the "high line" of industrial development, guiding resources toward high-quality fields and stimulating the vitality of market entities, thereby achieving the organic unity of inclusiveness and orientation. In policy design, we can focus on strengthening the synergy between livelihood and industrial policies, improving the institutional system for securing and improving people's livelihoods, deeply integrating livelihood security measures with industrial development orientations, and enhancing policy consistency to avoid policy fragmentation.
Stimulating endogenous power ensures the masses are both participants in and beneficiaries of development. The masses are both the creators of history and the main force of development. In the cycle of livelihoods and development, the masses are the ones who put forward livelihood needs, as well as the participants, promoters, and beneficiaries of industrial development. Only by fully mobilizing the initiative, enthusiasm, and creativity of the masses can we inject inexhaustible power into the cycle of livelihoods and development. We must adhere to the principle of "extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits," creating a vivid situation where everyone participates, everyone exerts effort, and everyone gains a sense of accomplishment. This involves ensuring that the masses obtain tangible benefits and an enhanced sense of gain, happiness, and security through livelihood improvements, while also building platforms for the masses to participate in development, allowing them to increase their income and realize their value through participation.