Intensify Efforts to “Invest in People”

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out, “We must respond to the people’s aspirations for a better life, uphold the principal position of the people, closely integrate high-quality population development with a high quality of life for the people, and closely integrate ‘investment in things’ with ‘investment in people’.” The 2025 *Government Work Report* states, “We will channel more financial resources into ‘investing in people’ and serving the people’s wellbeing, supporting the expansion of employment, promoting increases in residents’ incomes and reductions in their burdens, and strengthening consumption incentives, so as to form a virtuous cycle of economic development and improvement of people’s livelihoods.” On the new journey, we should accurately grasp the profound connotation of “investing in people,” adhere to overall planning and scientific deployment, innovate institutions and mechanisms, and form an organic unity in which economic development and improvement of people’s livelihoods support each other and achieve dynamic balance, thereby providing lasting impetus for accelerating high-quality development and advancing Chinese-path modernization.

习近平总书记指出，“要顺应人民群众对美好生活的期待，坚持人民主体地位，把人口高质量发展同人民高品质生活紧密结合起来，把‘投资于物’同‘投资于人’紧密结合起来”。2025年《政府工作报告》提出，“推动更多资金资源‘投资于人’、服务于民生，支持扩大就业、促进居民增收减负、加强消费激励，形成经济发展和民生改善的良性循环”。新征程上，应准确把握“投资于人”的深刻内涵，坚持全局谋划、科学布局，创新体制机制，形成经济发展与民生改善相互支撑、动态平衡的有机统一，为加快高质量发展、推进中国式现代化提供持久动力。

“Investing in people” plays an important guiding role

“投资于人”具有重要牵引作用

Channeling more financial resources into “investing in people” can create more inclusive and equitable conditions for the people to raise their level of education and enhance their development capabilities, improve the level of human capital and workers’ skills across society, adapt to the trend of social consumption demand upgrading from subsistence consumption to developmental and enjoyment-oriented consumption, increase the supply of high-quality products and services, and continuously stimulate new demand, effectively promoting consumption growth.

推动更多资金资源“投资于人”，能够为人民提高受教育程度、增强发展能力创造更加普惠公平的条件，提升全社会人力资本和劳动者技能水平，适配社会消费需求从生存型消费向发展型、享受型消费升级趋势，增加优质产品和服务供给，并不断激发新的需求，有效促进消费增长。

Investment, as one of the “three carriages” of economic development, has a quality and efficiency that directly affects the quality and sustainability of economic development. Human capital has a cumulative effect, which can activate people’s creative potential, help the economy achieve a transformative shift from traditional factor-driven to human capital-driven development, realize a geometric increase in investment returns, and enhance residents’ consumption capacity. At the same time, “investing in people” by targeting what is needed for development and what the people hope for in terms of their wellbeing will effectively resolve worries, stabilize social expectations, and boost consumption confidence. Through consumption guidance, it will encourage investment entities to focus on investment directions with reasonable returns, adjust production structures, reduce ineffective and low-efficiency investment, and form a smoother investment-consumption cycle.

投资作为经济发展的“三驾马车”之一，其质量与效益直接关系到经济发展的成色与可持续性。人力资本具有累积效应，能够激活人的创造潜能，助力经济发展从传统要素驱动向人力资本驱动的跨越性转变，实现投资效益的几何级增长，提高居民的消费能力。同时，锚定发展所需、民生所盼“投资于人”，将有效化解后顾之忧、稳定社会预期、提振消费信心，通过消费引导，激励投资主体聚焦有合理回报的投资方向，调整生产结构，减少无效投资和低效率投资，形成更加顺畅的投资消费循环。

The essence of development is to expand people’s capabilities. Only by promptly and effectively responding to the people’s expectations, channeling more financial resources to serve the people’s wellbeing and enhance their welfare, and transforming economic growth into perceptible income increases, life improvements, and spiritual enrichment for the people, can we stimulate the people’s initiative to jointly maintain the development environment, promote the development process, and share the fruits of development. At the same time, “investing in people” is based on the needs of people’s comprehensive development, establishing a capacity-building system that covers the entire population and the whole life cycle, including both welfare improvement and quality enhancement. Improving the quality of human resources and the quality of life can better mobilize the creativity and initiative of the people, providing sustainable intellectual support and innovation momentum for achieving high-quality development.

发展的本质是扩展人的可行能力，唯有及时有效回应人民期待，把更多的资金资源服务于民生、增进人民福祉，将经济增长转化为人民群众可感知的收入提升、生活改善和精神充实，才能激发人民群众共同维护发展环境、推动发展进程、共享发展成果的积极性。同时，“投资于人”立足人的全面发展需求，建立覆盖全人群、全生命周期的能力培养体系，既包括福利改善，又包括素质提升。提升人力资源质量和生活品质，能够更好调动人民群众的创造性和积极性，为实现高质量发展提供可持续的智力支撑和创新动能。

“Investing in people” based on people’s comprehensive development and multi-dimensional needs

立足人的全面发展和多维度需求“投资于人”

In the new stage of development, the people’s demands for the quality, level, and efficiency of health services are gradually increasing. We should focus on universal health coverage and whole-life-cycle management, and by optimizing the allocation of medical resources and strengthening disease prevention and health promotion, build an integrated health security system of “prevention-diagnosis-treatment-rehabilitation.” Actively promote the expansion and regional balanced distribution of high-quality medical resources, build a more scientific hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system, and make high-quality medical services fair and accessible. Adapt to the new normal of population development, improve childbirth support policies and incentive mechanisms, and strive to maintain a moderate fertility level and population size. Extend disease prevention and control to “early screening and early diagnosis,” and enhance the health intervention capacity of primary-level medical institutions through chronic disease management, family doctor contracting, and telemedicine collaboration networks. Continuously increase health science popularization and education, promote the shift from disease treatment to health management, from medical intervention to behavioral guidance, and from individual health care to environmental creation, so as to achieve health services and guarantees for the entire life course and continuously improve the level of health literacy among the whole population.

新的发展阶段，人民群众对健康服务质量、水平和效率的要求逐渐提高。要聚焦全民健康覆盖与全生命周期管理，通过优化医疗资源配置、强化疾病预防和健康促进，构建“预防—诊疗—康复”一体化健康保障体系。积极推动优质医疗资源扩容和区域均衡布局，构建更加科学的分级诊疗格局，让优质医疗服务公平可及。适应人口发展新常态，完善生育支持政策和激励机制，努力保持适度生育水平和人口规模。推动疾病防控向“早筛早诊”延伸，基层医疗机构通过慢性病管理、家庭医生签约和远程医疗协作网提升健康干预能力。持续加大健康科普宣传，推动从疾病治疗转向健康管理、从医疗干预转向行为引导、从个体保健转向环境营造，实现对生命全程的健康服务和保障，促进全民健康素养水平持续提升。

Promote the expansion and quality improvement of educational resources, strengthen the standardized construction of compulsory education, expand the supply of senior secondary education places, and strive to ensure that every child can enjoy fair and quality education. Guide higher education institutions to face the needs of economic and social development and national strategies, improve the mechanism for adjusting disciplinary and specialty settings, strengthen the construction of basic disciplines, emerging disciplines, and interdisciplinary disciplines, and cultivate compound innovative talents. Promote the penetration and integration of general education and vocational education, strengthen the organic connection between industrial demand and educational supply, enhance the adaptability of vocational education to economic and social development, and form a talent cultivation system covering the whole life cycle.

推动教育资源扩优提质，加强义务教育标准化建设，扩大高中阶段教育学位供给，努力让每个孩子都能享有公平而有质量的教育。引导高校面向经济社会发展和国家战略需求，完善学科专业设置调整机制，加强基础学科、新兴学科、交叉学科建设，培养复合型创新人才。推动普通教育与职业教育的渗透融通，强化产业需求与教育供给的有机衔接，增强职业教育对经济社会发展的适应能力，形成覆盖全生命周期的人才培养体系。

Employment is the most fundamental aspect of people’s wellbeing. We must adapt to the new trends of population change and technological transformation, comprehensively use fiscal, financial, tax incentives, social security, and other policy measures, and coordinate the deep integration of industrial upgrading and employment promotion. Take the development of new quality productive forces as the starting point, cultivate and strengthen emerging industries, lay out and build future industries, and simultaneously develop industries related to people’s wellbeing, creating job supply through the extension of industrial chains. Strengthen digital empowerment, build an inclusive and shared employment service network, create an employment support system, and improve the efficiency of public employment services and the matching efficiency of the labor market. Improve the social insurance system for flexible employment personnel, migrant workers, and those in new forms of employment, formulate differentiated labor standards for new employment models, clarify core rights and interests protection indicators, and ensure that every worker can obtain decent work and fair development opportunities.

就业是最基本的民生，要适应人口变化和技术变革新趋势，综合运用财政金融、税收优惠、社会保障等政策措施，统筹推进产业升级与就业促进的深度融合。以发展新质生产力为抓手，培育壮大新兴产业，布局建设未来产业，同步发展民生产业，通过产业链延伸创造岗位供给。强化数字赋能，构建普惠共享的就业服务网络，打造就业支持体系，提高公共就业服务效能和劳动力市场匹配效率。健全灵活就业人员、农民工、新就业形态人员社会保险制度，针对新型用工模式制定差异化劳动基准，明确核心权益保障指标，让每位劳动者都能获得体面劳动、公平发展机会。

Consumption is not only a major driving force for economic growth but also an important means of improving people’s wellbeing. Entering the new stage of development, we must adhere to combining the boosting of consumption with the guarantee of people’s wellbeing, and strive to build a positive cycle mechanism in which consumption leads economic growth and the fruits of development benefit the people. On the one hand, conform to the trend of rapid development of service consumption and the upgrading of commodity consumption demand, increase the supply of high-quality products and services, and promote the standardization of services such as health and elderly care, and housekeeping and childcare. Actively cultivate new types of consumption, accelerate the layout of tracks such as digital consumption, green consumption, and healthy consumption, develop new business forms such as low-altitude tourism, national trend cultural and creative products, and ice and snow sports, and expand new growth points for consumption. On the other hand, adhere to two-way efforts in institutional guarantees and regulatory innovation, improve the consumer rights protection system, and continuously purify the consumption environment. Accelerate the improvement of systems and legal systems covering quality standards, credit constraints, comprehensive governance, and consumer rights protection; at the same time, strengthen the precision and timeliness of market supervision, achieve early detection and rapid handling of acts that infringe upon consumer rights and interests, and effectively enhance residents’ consumption confidence.

消费不仅是经济增长的主要驱动力，也是改善民生的重要手段。进入新发展阶段，要坚持将提振消费和保障民生相结合，努力构建消费引领经济增长、发展成果惠及民生的正向循环机制。一方面，顺应服务消费快速发展和商品消费需求提质升级的趋势，增加优质产品和服务供给，推动健康养老、家政托育等服务标准化建设。积极培育新型消费，加快布局数字消费、绿色消费、健康消费等赛道，发展低空旅游、国潮文创、冰雪运动等新业态，壮大消费新增长点。另一方面，坚持制度保障和监管创新双向发力，完善消费者权益保护体系，持续净化消费环境。加快完善包括质量标准、信用约束、综合治理、消费维权等方面的制度和法律体系；同时强化市场监管的精准性和时效性，对侵害消费者权益的行为做到早发现、快处置，切实增强居民消费信心。

Implementing “investing in people” requires scientific planning and coordinated promotion

落实“投资于人”需科学谋划、统筹推进

Adhere to “doing everything within our capacity while acting according to our capability,” and fully unleash consumption potential. Strengthen institutional supply, and “do everything within our capacity” to promote inclusive, basic, and bottom-line people’s wellbeing construction. Follow the laws of economic and social development, coordinate needs and possibilities, and “act according to our capability” to base the improvement of people’s wellbeing on economic development and fiscal affordability. Step by step, increase investment in areas such as education, healthcare, culture, tourism, elderly care, and childcare, achieving the integration of effective investment and potential consumption.

坚持“尽力而为、量力而行”，充分释放消费潜能。强化制度供给，“尽力而为”推动普惠性、基础性、兜底性民生建设。遵循经济社会发展规律，统筹需要和可能，“量力而行”将民生改善建立在经济发展和财政可承受的基础之上。循序渐进加大对教育、医疗、文化、旅游、养老、托育等领域的投资，实现有效益投资与有潜能消费的融合。

Adhere to “comprehensive coverage with key priorities,” and strive to expand effective supply. Respond to the trend characteristics of China’s population development, such as declining birth rates, aging, and regional differentiation in population increase and decrease, promote the coordination of basic public service supply with population changes, and form a development model that combines full-cycle care for people’s wellbeing construction with targeted policy implementation. Coordinate and promote with systematic thinking, based on the needs of different groups for people’s wellbeing guarantees at different stages of the life cycle, and promote a more balanced provision of basic public services. At the same time, focus on the trend characteristics of consumption upgrading for “the elderly and the young,” develop multi-level elderly care security and elderly care services, improve the public service system, and provide inclusive services with guaranteed quality, affordable prices, and sustainable operations. Provide more precise professional skills training and public employment services for young employed people and older workers. Leverage the multiplier effect of institutional innovation and technological progress on supply upgrading, and through a combination of systemic policy tools such as investment, taxes and fees, and institutional mechanism reforms, leverage more social forces to participate and expand effective supply.

坚持“全面覆盖、重点突出”，着力扩大有效供给。应对我国人口发展呈现的少子化、老龄化、区域人口增减分化等趋势性特征，推动基本公共服务供给与人口变化相协调，形成民生建设全周期关怀与靶向施策相结合的发展模式。以系统思维统筹推进，基于不同群体在生命周期不同阶段的民生保障需求，推动基本公共服务更加均衡。同时，聚焦“一老一小”消费升级趋势特征，发展多层次养老保障和养老事业，健全公共服务体系，提供质量有保障、价格可承受、运营可持续的普惠服务。为青年就业人口和大龄劳动者提供更加精准的专业技能培训和公共就业服务。发挥制度创新和技术进步对供给升级的倍增效应，通过投资、税费和体制机制改革等系统性政策工具组合，撬动更多的社会力量参与，扩大有效供给。

Adhere to “scientific overall planning and coordinated efforts with both hands,” and promote the comprehensive development of the individual. “Investing in things” and “investing in people” are dialectically unified and mutually reinforcing. Intensifying efforts to “invest in people” is conducive to the full release of individual potential and the comprehensive improvement of the people’s wellbeing. The reasonable scale and level of “investing in things” should be maintained, the priority order and negative list for government investment should be clarified, and infrastructure construction and public service provision should be advanced in a coordinated manner. More financial resources should be channeled into areas such as medical care, education, housing, and career development, to improve the quality and capability of the labor force, resolve the worries of talent in starting businesses and pursuing careers, promote scientific and technological innovation, cultivate and develop new quality productive forces, and ultimately achieve the comprehensive development of the individual.

坚持“科学统筹、两手发力”，促进实现人的全面发展。“投资于物”与“投资于人”是辩证统一、相互促进的。加大力度“投资于人”，有利于实现个体潜能全方位释放与民生福祉全面提升。应保持“投资于物”的合理规模和水平，明确政府投资优先顺序和负面清单，统筹推进基础设施建设与公共服务供给。推动更多资金资源投资医疗、教育、住房、职业发展等领域，提高劳动者素质和能力，解决人才干事创业的后顾之忧，推动科技创新、培育发展新质生产力，最终实现人的全面发展。

(Authors: Zhi Min and Sun Yashan, both are specially appointed researchers of the Shaanxi Provincial Research Center for the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and assistant researchers at the Shaanxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences)

（作者：智敏、孙雅姗，均系陕西省中国特色社会主义理论体系研究中心特约研究员、陕西省社会科学院助理研究员）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧