Ahead of this year's Spring Festival, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited a community canteen at an apartment complex for seniors to learn about local efforts to improve public convenience services and elderly care. He also had a warm conversation with delivery workers taking a break at the canteen, asking about their work and daily lives.

Xi stressed that Party committees and governments at all levels must care for them and provide better services to support their lives, work and education.

The year 2026 marks the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Xi once pointed out that people represent the nation, and the nation is made up of people. He also said the survival of a party depends on the support of its people, adding that with people's confidence and support, the CPC is invincible in the face of any obstacles.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, nearly 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty, China has completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and the country has established the world's largest systems for education, social security, healthcare and urban housing support. 

Access to education at all levels has reached or surpassed the average for middle- and high-income countries. Basic medical insurance coverage has remained above 95%, life expectancy has risen above 79 years, and the middle-income group now exceeds 400 million people.

The emphasis on putting people first is more evident as China is in the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030). More than one-third of the plan for national economic and social development is related to people's livelihoods, covering employment, income, education, healthcare, elderly care and childcare – issues that are of the greatest and most immediate concern to the public.

Regarding food delivery couriers, ride-hailing drivers and e-commerce workers, known as the "new forms of employment" and representing a fast-growing part of China's labor market that has emerged with the rise of the internet and digital economy, the plan stressed efforts to boost the sound development of flexible and new forms of employment and support people in flexible and new forms of employment to participate in insurance schemes for employees and further improve the policies for transferring social security accounts.

Zhang Linshan, a researcher at the Academy of Macroeconomic Research under China's National Development and Reform Commission, said the 15th Five-Year Plan sends a strong signal that China remains committed to a people-centered approach, with high-quality development focused on improving the quality of people's lives and ensuring that development outcomes benefit all people more broadly and more fairly.

Zhang said this also reflects China's shift in development from pursuing whether there is growth to pursuing whether growth is of higher quality.

The goal is to ensure that economic growth and improvements in people's livelihoods advance in tandem, creating a virtuous cycle and enabling people to feel more secure and more confident about the future, Zhang added.