Editor's note:

At present, the domestic spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in China with Wuhan as the major battlefield has basically been stemmed. Lifting of the lockdown on Wuhan and reopening of the city's outbound channels on April 8 marked an important phased achievement by China in the battle against the COVID-19 epidemic. Meanwhile, we must be clearly aware of the complexity and severity of the epidemic's development both at home and abroad and continue the current prevention and control measures in a more effective and meticulous way. 

To minimize the impact of the epidemic, achieve the economic and social goals for this year, complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects and win the critical battle against poverty, the whole country must continue arduous effort in solidarity.

The following are some highlights of proposals on epidemic prevention and control, economic and social development, the critical battle against poverty and the support for the global epidemic fight that have been forwarded by the Committee on Proposals of the CPPCC National Committee to relevant agencies for their reference.

The Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang: promote quick post-epidemic resumption of economic development

With epidemic prevention and control continuing on a positive trend, we must, as epidemic prevention and control measures become routine, accelerate the resumption of production and daily life and coordinate the work on reform, development and stability so as to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all aspects on schedule. To this end, the following proposals are put forward:

1. Launch investment projects in advance

(1) Cut the red tape and hasten the approval process. Build up the project stockpile, hasten the planning and construction process and launch projects in advance; conduct online or parallel approvals to reduce time consumption.

(2) Publish lists of needed projects online. Secure manufacturing enterprises in advance; reach deals with both upstream and downstream enterprises; help them obtain business and loans. By raising advanced payment or making payments in advance, maintain the cash flow of associated enterprises and help them overcome funding difficulties.

(3) Lead enterprises in risk prevention and control, strengthen credit control, streamline procedures under the law, toughen contract management and conduct post-contract management

2. Intensify provisional relief fund support

(1) Set up a provisional relief fund which can grant money to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the form of special funds.

(2) Increase the size of the fund, use it as leverage, and join forces with financial institutions to support micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

(3) Diversify the sources of the fund and ramp up contributions from publicly-owned enterprises. The interests on the contribution from non-governmental entities must be fully subsidized through fiscal discount in order to provide micro, small and medium-sized enterprises with low or zero interest loans.

3. Utilize supply-chain finance

(1) Improve supporting policies on supply-chain finance, lift the restrictions on market access, specify a negative list, shore up the development of supply-chain finance, and set up a stable supply-chain emergency fund.

(2) Prompt commercial banks to fund micro, small and medium-sized enterprises on the same supply-chain through supply-chain companies and develop specific high-grade supply-chain insurance products and risk funds.

(3) Provide funds for direct and indirect client groups in both upstream and downstream supply-chain companies and closely associate with linked suppliers.

4. Advance market economy reform

1. Enhance capital flow, break up all types of monopolies, open up knowledge-intensive service industries and bring in capital from both domestic and foreign markets.

(2) Accelerate the integration of the internet with the real economy and encourage enterprises to hasten technological upgrading.

(3) Improve the indicator-based evaluation system for the business environment and guarantee effective implementation of relevant standards consistent with the law.

The Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang: Respond to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the critical battle against poverty

The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the critical battle against poverty is reflected in the following ways: first, the special breeding industry has taken a direct blow, leading to decreased gain and effect of the industry's poverty alleviation effort; second, a reduction in the economic gain of the worst-hit tertiary industry is directly passed on to and harms employment demands, affecting reinforcement of the existing achievements on poverty alleviation; third, once again, the epidemic has revealed the medical service and equipment shortages in impoverished regions and their limited ability to handle public health emergencies; fourth, the burden on grassroots officials is quite heavy as they have to not only respond to the examination of their poverty alleviation work but bear the huge pressure arising from epidemic control.

Proposals:

1. Properly transform or give support to relevant industries. Facilitate the transformation of affected farmers in the special breeding industry by adjusting industrial planning and developing compensation policies; establish a licensing regime for wild animal breeding to ensure the non-edible artificial breeding and utilization of wild animals; and enhance financial support to avoid the retreat of such farmers into poverty due to debt or policy changes.

2. Fully guarantee employment. Improve precise matchups between employers and unemployed people in impoverished regions; encourage local small and micro-sized enterprises to create jobs; draw on such approaches as work relief to promote living environment and infrastructure construction in rural areas; and screen the employment in settlements for relocated impoverished populations to ensure that at least one person in each of the registered households has a stable job.

3. Improve public health services and people’s health awareness in rural areas. Increase the contributions to rural public health and step up dissemination of related information.

4, Give more care to grassroots officials. Review and simplify their evaluation and examination system to mitigate their pressure over examinations

The Central Committee of China Zhi Gong Party: Building up the capability of monitoring, forewarning and handling major public health emergencies 

The occurrence and development of the COVID-19 epidemic reveal the shortcomings in China's capability of monitoring, forewarning and handling public health emergencies, which include insufficient monitoring and forewarning capability, especially for new-type or abrupt epidemics; shortages of specialists in medical institutions and underdeveloped medical technology in rural areas and communities; insufficient coordination between clinical treatment, disease control and scientific research which causes failure to adequately collect, study and share clinical and epidemiological data; and conspicuous shortages in the stockpile of anti-epidemic emergency supplies and inadequate key supply production and distribution capacity.

Proposal:

1. Effectively improve the capability of monitoring and early warning about new types of acute infectious diseases. Establish a well-functioning information monitoring system to raise voluntary monitory capability, improve the media monitoring and intelligence collection system, pay attention to academic opinions and voices of front-line witnesses and specialists, scientifically identify and quickly spot information of importance to public health, and raise the professional level and ability of disease prevention and control agencies in terms of infectious disease monitoring;

2. Effectively enhance the capability of the grassroots medical and health system to prevent and control major epidemics. Appropriately equip towns and communities with public health human resources, strengthen the hierarchical medical system, improve grassroots medical services, and effectively implement policies focused on epidemic prevention at the grassroots level;

3. Beef up and coordinate technological support for scientific breakthroughs. Establish an open mechanism for sharing critical epidemic research resources (including clinical treatment of cases, pathogen samples and epidemiological materials) and a unified sharing platform. Break the barriers between laboratory research, epidemiology and clinical research and combine forces to focus on making major breakthroughs, establish a long-standing mechanism to support fundamental research, build leading scientific research teams in each field, and strengthen cooperation with international organizations like the World Health Organization as well as developed countries;

4. Effectively enhance the storage and allocation capability of anti-epidemic supplies. Develop anti-epidemic supply storage plans to specify the scope and methods of supply storage, establish information databases on supply and equipment storages, and establish an emergency storage management mechanism.

The All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce: Establish a raw food material positive list system in China

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the SARS epidemic in 2003, the melamine-caused poisonous milk powder incident in 2008 and the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic have all had severe negative impact on China's economy and society.

In addition, diseases like bird flu, African swine fever and mad cow disease that have broken out repeatedly are related to the safety of animal husbandry. To prevent the occurrence of similar massive public safety emergencies and promote the improvement of science, technology and management in a more effective manner, it is important to conduct an all-round review of China's rules on the technology and management of raw food materials and raw feed materials for domesticated animals as soon as possible. A positive list system for materials, supplementary materials and additives which is similar to the modern pharmacopoeia system should be established, and strictly standardize manufacturing, circulation, procedural monitoring and testing, and research and development of food and feed materials.

Proposals

1. Main and supplementary food materials on a food safety positive list should include plant food materials, animal food materials, edible fungus products and their processed variants, optional types of artificial genetically-altered species and their products. The list must also specify the quality standards, scope of application, rules for processing and circulation and criteria for monitoring and inspection;

2. No one should be allowed to produce, process or sell products not on the positive list including wildlife products, genetically-altered products and their processed variants, and the hunting, sale and processing of wild animals and the use of wild animal products must be strictly prohibited;

3. Monomers, raw materials and supplementary materials and mixtures of all kinds of food additives which are subject to existing national safety standards shall be added to the positive list. Their range of application, usage, content of final products and monitoring and testing methods shall be strictly stipulated with strict compliance by all producers, circulators and users;

4. Encourage and support the research and development of new food resources, new food additives and artificial genetically-altered species materials, but such research and development must be carried out under certain circumstances and comparable safety controls. Research and development could be generalized and applied only after multiple control tests at different levels have been conducted, and have proved from different angles and in different environments that they won’t have negative impact on food, biological, ecological and environmental safety;

Ensure the supply of anti-epidemic materials to contribute to global cooperation in the epidemic fight

It is pointed out at the G20 Summit that to collectively maintain the stability of the global industrial supply chain, China will step up its efforts to supply the international market with such products as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), daily necessities and anti-epidemic materials. Currently, as the COVID-19 pandemic is raging globally, the shortage of anti-epidemic materials has become prominent. China is the world's largest face mask producer and exporter with its annual output accounting for 50 percent of the global total. With the comprehensive effort made at earlier stages, industries in China which produce such anti-epidemic materials as face masks, protective suits and sanitizers have been gradually resuming their production, effectively satisfying the domestic need with the help of many enterprises in other industries which shifted their production lines to anti-epidemic material production. Globally, with the vast disparity between countries in terms of resource endowment, economic development and productivity, we must seize this opportunity to not only meet domestic demands and the requirements for emergency storage but also to guide enterprises in giving material support for the global pandemic fight and accelerating industrial improvement and upgrading in order to raise their competitiveness in global markets.

1. Actively lay out for global markets. Based on the evaluation of the development of the global pandemic and the sizes of domestic and global markets, we shall strengthen the risk assessment and establish a market-oriented, enterprise-led and government-supported "go global" policy system which focuses on markets along the Belt and Road in order to help enterprises lower costs, control risks and enhance competitiveness.

2. Push industries to raise their quality and efficiency. A long-term view should be taken to guide industries in making adjustments and shifts, prioritize the support for the development of advanced technology and equipment and key generic technology, improve product quality and supply efficiency, advance the production chains of relevant industries, raise industrial concentration and actively merge with and lead the global anti-pandemic material production chain;

3. Deepen the reforms to streamline administration, delegate powers, and improve regulation and services. Narrow down the scope and shorten times required for administrative approval, develop a negative list of anti-epidemic supply projects subject to administrative approval, and spare no effort to facilitate cross-border trade of anti-epidemic supplies;

4. Hasten the layout for cross-border e-commerce development. Encourage enterprises to take advantage of relevant free-trade agreements and such multilateral and regional mechanisms as the WTO, the G20 and the BRICS to accelerate their overseas market layout and expansion in global markets.

Strategic thinking on the safety of China’s manufacturing industrial chain amid epidemic prevention and control

Since the links on the manufacturing industrial chain are connected to one another, the breakdown of one link will lead to the malfunction of others. A full industrial chain is not only a potent guarantee for made-in-China products and the China Miracle but a powerful platform for the optimization and upgrading of China's industrial structure. To coordinate epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, we must try to restore China's full manufacturing industrial chain and avoid the loosening of the industrial chain in order to ensure Chinese contribution to the stability of the global supply chain.

1. Solve thorny issues to propel work resumption of key enterprises in the industrial chain;

2. Conduct scientific assessment of the impact of the epidemic on the safety of China's industrial chain and develop emergency plans for each classification;

3. Step up research and development of core technologies in order to strengthen the influence of China's industrial chain during the restructuring of the global industrial chain;

4. Promote cross-border reliance of China's industrial chain on local elements to make the maintaining of the safety of the industrial chain more economically affordable;

5. Build a national industrial chain safety system to enhance the protection of key and core technologies and high-end equipment in the process of foreign investments and acquisitions and the going global of Chinese enterprises;

6. Focus on setting high standards for manufacturing powerhouses and establishing a long-standing mechanism for protecting China's industrial chain;

Start rehabilitation treatment of COVID-19 patients cured and discharged from hospitals as soon as possible

It is said that despite the fact that many COVID-19 patients, especially those who were seriously or critically ill, showed negative results of nucleic acid tests and better CT results before they were discharged from hospitals, the majority of them haven't seen a full functional recovery of their damaged organs which compromises their ability to live and work, and some could suffer permanent functional disorder or disability.

Rehabilitation experts and nurses and respiratory therapists in the national medical teams sent by other provinces to Hubei province have benefited patients by conducting rehabilitation therapies at early stages. Meanwhile, medical workers in some makeshift hospitals arranged various physical exercises (rehabilitation trainings) for patients, which have also yielded positive results. Based on the actual situations in Hubei and the rest of China, the rehabilitation treatment for COVID-19 patients shall be started as soon as possible.

Proposals:

1. Improve the medical insurance policies for the rehabilitation treatment of COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals. The guideline on the internet plus medical insurance services recently issued by the National Healthcare Security Administration and the National Health Commission specifies that patients with common and chronic diseases who are reviewed at qualified internet medical institutions can have their treatment fees and medicine costs reimbursed through medical insurance;

2. Develop targeted rehabilitation guidelines. The guideline on the rehabilitation of the COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital recently released by the National Health Commission gives detailed guidance and requirements for the rehabilitation of such patients;

3. Set up national or local rehabilitation treatment teams. Draw on provincial-level rehabilitation associations to set up those teams (including doctors, rehabilitation nurses, respiratory therapists and physical therapists) which, on their own or in cooperation with local rehabilitation forces, take on the work in rehabilitation sections or hospitals;

4. Properly conduct the rehabilitation treatment of patients in Hubei province. Gradually shift the focus of the medical treatment of COVID-19 patients from the clinical treatment at an earlier stage to multi-tiered and classified functional rehabilitation treatment;

Draw on industrial internet to address SMEs' plight caused by the epidemic

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the CPC Central Committee, sticking to the strategy of "fighting on two fronts", launched a series of supporting polices targeting private enterprises.

The epidemic helps to lay bare many chronic issues that hindered high-quality development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), namely, the mismatch between their production modes and market needs, their weak control of the supply chain, their low financing ability and few financing channels, and their shortage of high-end talents.

The growth of the private economy demands the full unleashing of SMEs' internal power and use of the industrial internet which is an important tool in boosting SME's transformation and upgrading. The proposals are as follows:

1. Generalize the application of the industrial internet among SMEs. Draw on the policy mix for the supply-side structural reform to promote the application of the industrial internet and raise the proportion of SMEs in pilot and demonstration programs and innovative development projects.

2. Plan accurately to raise the application efficiency of the industrial internet. Improve the guiding mechanism for the application in private enterprises and assist SMEs in conducting self-evaluation.

3. Enhance the integrated application of such technologies as blockchain and big data and improve special data platforms for the application of industrial internet in SMEs.

4. Improve the rights and interest protection system to create a favorable environment for the application. Governments shall streamline the technological project declaration procedure and performance evaluation mechanism for industrial internet enterprises.

5. Share intelligence resources to alleviate the talent shortage. Integrate intelligence resources through the industrial internet to form industrial mechanism models.