State Council Information Office press conference on 10/10 | Image source: State Council Information Office website
Reporter: Wang Feng
The State Council Information Office held a press conference on 10 month 10 to introduce progress in promoting high-quality development of employment and social security during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Li Zhong, spokesperson and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, reported that as of the end of 9, the number of participants in basic old-age pension insurance, unemployment insurance, and work-related injury insurance nationwide reached 10.79 billion, 2.51 billion, and 3.27 billion respectively. The combined balance of these three social insurance funds totaled 11.2 trillion yuan.
Li Zhong explained that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, efforts will be made to build a denser and more reliable social security net. The key priorities can be summarized in three keywords: expand coverage and improve quality, refine the system, and ensure security.
The first keyword is "expanding coverage and improving quality," which means implementing a high-quality enrollment initiative to bring more people under protection. We will ensure that everyone eligible is covered by optimizing policies and using data-driven approaches to identify individuals, thereby driving growth in enrollment numbers, refining the structure, and enhancing quality. Our goal is to maintain an old-age pension insurance enrollment rate of over 95% during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, reach 100 million participants in unemployment insurance, and achieve 290 million participants in work-related injury insurance.
Prioritize encouraging flexible workers, migrant workers, and those in new employment models to join the employee pension insurance scheme. Many of these individuals are currently enrolled only in resident pension insurance. A key goal during the 15th Five-Year Plan period is to transition them into employee pension coverage as widely as possible by establishing a sustainable financing mechanism where employers, platform companies, and workers jointly contribute and share costs fairly.
At the same time, expand the pilot program for occupational injury protection to cover more workers in new employment forms. In terms of unemployment insurance, focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), individual businesses with employees, and social organizations to continuously broaden coverage.
The second keyword is "improving systems," which means continuing to deepen reforms and promoting fairer, more robust systems. For example, we will refine and implement a national pooling system for old-age pensions, improve the fund coordination and adjustment mechanism, strengthen assessment and reward-punishment mechanisms, and accelerate the standardization of policies. Additionally, we will enhance actuarial systems for social security, conduct regular medium- and long-term revenue and expenditure forecasts, and better leverage actuarial analysis in policy formulation and risk assessment. At the same time, we will optimize pension mechanisms to ensure the system is more efficient and sustainable.
The third key point is "ensuring security," which means strengthening the risk prevention and control system to firmly safeguard the bottom line of fund safety. We will continuously optimize the five-in-one risk prevention and control system encompassing policy, administration, information, supervision, and publicity; strengthen the coordinated mechanism of human, regulatory, technological, and community-based defenses ("four defenses"); further improve the fund supervision system covering all insurance types and spanning the entire process; refine cross-departmental collaborative supervision mechanisms; and maintain a high-pressure stance against fraud and abuse of insurance funds. At the same time, we will continue to standardize the investment and operation of basic old-age pension funds and annuity funds, steadily achieve preservation and appreciation of assets while expanding strategic reserves, and resolutely protect the people's livelihood savings.
