Premier Li Keqiang delivered the government work report at the First Session of the 13th National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China on March 5, 2018.

A review of the past five years

Economic strength has reached a new high

China's gross domestic product (GDP) has risen from 54 trillion to 82.7 trillion yuan, registering average annual growth of 7.1 percent

Its share in the global economy has grown to roughly 15 percent, up from 11.4 percent

Government revenue

has increased from 11.7 trillion to 17.3 trillion yuan Consumer prices rose at an average annual rate of 1.9 percent

The structure of the Chinese economy has seen a major transformation

Consumption's contribution to growth has increased from 54.9 to 58.8 percent

The share of the service sector rising from 45.3 to 51.6 percent of the economy

High-tech manufacturing has achieved an average annual increase of 11.7 percent

The annual grain yield has reached 600 million metric tons

China's urbanization rate has risen from 52.6 to 58.5 percent

Innovation-driven development has produced significant results

China's investment in research and development (R&D) has grown at an average annual rate of 11 percent, ranking second in the world in scale.

The contribution of technological advances to economic growth has risen from 52.2 to 57.5 percent in the past 5 years.

The average number of new businesses opened daily has risen from over 5,000 to more than 16,000 over the same period.

Significant headway has been made in reform and opening-up

Reforms to streamline administration and delegate powers, improve regulation, and optimize services, have driven profound shifts in the functions of government

The Belt and Road Initiative has been making major progress. The composition of China's foreign trade and investment has been improved. Trade and investment volumes rank among the largest in the world.

The environment has seen gradual improvement

We have designed and enforced a list of key measures, achieving solid progress.

Both energy and water consumption per unit of GDP have fallen more than 20 percent

The release of major pollutants has been consistently declining and the number of days of heavy air pollution in key cities has fallen 50 percent

Forest coverage has increased by 10.87 million hectares, and the area of desertified land has been reduced by close to 2,000 square kilometers on average each year.

All main targets and tasks for economic and social development were accomplished and the overall performance exceeded expectations in 2017

GDP grew 6.9 percent and personal income rose 7.3 percent, both beating the previous year's growth rates

Around 13.51 million new urban jobs were created,and the jobless rate was the lowest in recent years

Industrial growth began to rebound, and corporate profits increased 21%

Government revenue grew 7.4%, reversing the slowdown in growth

The total import and export value rose 14.2 percent.

Inward foreign investment reached 136.3 billion U.S.dollars, hitting a new alltime high

The environment has seen gradual improvement

With a commitment to the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, we have focused on developing new and better approaches to macro regulation, kept major indicators within an appropriate range, and achieved a stable, positive economic performance.

Following a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy.

We have strengthened management over local government debt, and issued local government bonds to replace outstanding debt, cutting liabilities by 1.2 trillion yuan.The deficit-to-GDP ratio has been kept within 3 percent.We have reformed and improved the market-based exchange rate mechanism and kept the RMB exchange rate basically stable; and foreign exchange reserves are now rising not falling.

With a commitment to treating supply-side structural reform as our main task, we have focused on fostering new growth drivers to speed up economic structural upgrading.

A 100-billion-yuan fund for rewards and subsidies has been put in place by the central government to support efforts to assist affected employees.

We have cut steel production capacity by more than 170 million metric tons and coal production capacity by 800 million metric tons, and over 1.1 million affected employees have been assisted.30% of government-managed funds and fees have been cut.

Over 60 percent of the fees and charges levied on businesses by the central government have been abolished.

We have focused on promoting win-win cooperation, and significantly improved the performance of our country's open economy.

Initiated the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,set up the Silk Road Fund

Established 11 pilot free trade zones. A number of successful outcomes from pilot reforms are now being applied nationwide.

Set up 13 comprehensive experimental zones for cross-border e-commerce. Singlewindow document processing for international trade has been applied nationwide, cutting the average time for customs clearance by over half.

The composition of foreign investment has improved, with investment in high-tech industries doubling.

Signed or upgraded eight free trade agreements

We have taken major steps to address pollution and achieved notable progress in ecological conservation.

Achieved a drop of over 30 percent in the average density of fine particulate matter(PM2.5) in key areas.

71 percent of coal-fired power plants achieving ultra-low emissions.

Improved the energy mix, cutting the share of coal consumption by 8.1 percentage points and increasing the share of clean energy consumption by 6.3 percentage points

Worked toward and saw that the Paris Agreement was put into force.