With the development of its economy, Tianjinattaches great importance to ensuring andimproving people’s life and gives top priorityto ensuring the rights and interests of disadvantagedgroups in social security and practiceoverall planning of urban and rural social securitysystem. It is improving the construction ofthe system to solidly bolster the building of aharmonious society.

According to the statistics till the end of June,2008, the population of pension coverage hadreached 3.584 million; the population of medicalinsurance 3.883 million; the population ofunemployment insurance 2.287 million; thepopulation of work-injury insurance 2.609 million;the population of fertility insurance 1.899million. These five insurance funds total at17.05 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increaseof 33.8 percent.

While it is attaching great importance to theconstruction of social security regulations andservice systems, the Tianjin Municipal Governmentis also adhering to the people-orientedprinciple, planning and pushing ahead urbanand rural social security system in a holisticand coordinated way. In the year of 2008,two regulations took effect, involving urbanresidents’ fundamental medical insuranceand rural residents’ social pension coverage.The two systems will cover 45 percent of city’sresidents, totaling at 4.45 million. The city,therefore, turns out to be a pioneer in terms ofestablishing basic medical insurance and socialpension coverage for rural and urban citizens.

The Tianjin Municipal Government pays specialattention to tackling the problems in people’slife when it is pushing ahead the wide-coverage,basic, multi-layer and sustainable socialinsurance system. It directs the security policesto benefiting disadvantaged groups throughgovernment subsidies.

According to the Tianjin Labor and Social SecurityBureau, the local social security system networkwas extended from workers to all the residents,from urban areas to rural areas and fromthe easier parts to more complex issues. Duringthe process, the government has adhered toone important principle that the system shouldbe affordable and accessible to the people, especiallythose in disadvantaged position.

In 2008, the Tianjin Municipal Government endorsedand put into practice Proposals on FurtherImproving the Social Insurance System ofthe City, making a comprehensive plan of thesocial insurance system aiming to cover urbanand rural workers, residents and all other socialgroups, extending the coverage of pension,medical, unemployment, work-injury and fertilityinsurance to rural enterprise staff to bettersecure their interests.

Tianjin’s urban staff medical insurance systemtook effect in 2001 and at present, the overallurban and rural medical insurance system hasbeen set up with security platforms, such ascombining of individuals’ accounts and society’splanning as a whole, medical cost socialpool for major diseases and medical assistance.A multi-layer, wide-coverage and basicsystem has come into shape.

Since 2005, Tianjin has taken the lead in practicingthe system that connects unemploymentinsurance to urban subsistence allowance andre-employment. It is stipulated that peopleon subsistence allowance or the unemployedwho have found a job by themselves will getsix-month subsistence allowance and theunemployment insurance compensation forthe remaining time period of the duration ofvalidity of the insurance, respectively, and thatpeople who were on unemployment insuranceand have started their own business willreceive employment subsidies. The populationon unemployment insurance in Tianjin hasdropped from the previous 120,000 to the recent30,000.

When it began to bring into effect the workinjuryinsurance system, the Tianjin MunicipalGovernment had covered the senior injuredworkers ever since the founding of the country.In order to meet the urgent demand of migrantrural workers, the city established a work-injuryinsurance policy to give the worker priority totake part in the insurance system in 2004. In2008, it linked work-injury benefits includinglump-sum compensation for death in work,medical subsidy for work-injury and living andcare allowance to the average salary of the society,timely improving work-injury compensationamount.

At the end of 2007, the Tianjin Municipal Governmentinnovatively carried out the policy ofcovering 260,000 migrant construction workersby calculating the insurance amount based onthe total construction cost amount. In 2008,Tianjin again took the lead by flexibly coveringworkers from service industries of businessand trading, food and accommodation by linkingthe insurance amount to the size of thebusiness, which will directly benefit 400,000workers in the service industry.

In the spirit of sharing development fruits withall the retired and providing universal benefitsfor the whole society, the Tianjin Municipal Governmenthas spared no effort in improving thesocial security situation, with 60 percent of thenew accessible financial resource employed inthe construction of local social security system.Retired people receive an ever-increasing pension.There is an average increase of 325 yuanper capita by 42.5 percent in the past threeyears, 70 yuan higher than the national average.