The living environment is improving. In 2020, sanitary toilets were used by more than 68 percent of rural households. The system for the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of domestic waste covered more than 90 percent of villages. Domestic sewage treatment covered 25.5 percent of rural areas. In 46 major cities, 83 million households in 94.6 percent of communities were involved in domestic waste sorting programs. More than 90 percent of black and fetid water bodies in built-up areas of cities at and above prefecture level had been eliminated.

China enforces stringent eco-environmental conservation. As of 2020, nearly 10,000 nature reserves had been established across the country, covering 18 percent of China’s land mass, and bringing some 90 percent of land ecosystems and 85 percent of key wild animal populations under effective protection. China’s forest coverage rose from 12.7 percent in the early 1970s to 23 percent in 2020. While the global forest stock decreased by 178 million ha between 1990 and 2020, China’s forest area has seen an average annual increase of 2.5 million ha in the past decade, ranking top in the world. Between 2012 and June 2021, China completed desertification control work involving over 19 million ha of land, and 1.8 million ha have been closed off to prevent deterioration. China has become the first country to achieve a zero increase in desertification, making a great contribution to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development goal of zero increase in land degradation across the globe.

9. Achieving a Higher HDI Score

According to the Human Development Report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), China was among the low-ranked countries in terms of the human development index (HDI) score in 1990; it moved into the ranks of countries with medium HDI scores in 1996; it ascended into the ranks of countries with high HDI scores in 2011. From 1990 to 2019, China’s HDI score increased from 0.499 to 0.761. China is the only country to have risen from a low-ranked country to a high-ranked country since 1990, when the UNDP first started to calculate countries’ HDI ratings.

IV. Protecting Civil and Political Rights with Law and Governance

In building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the CPC and the Chinese government have pursued a people-centered development philosophy, and adopted vigorous and practical measures to develop whole-process people’s democracy, uphold social equity and justice, and ensure by law that people enjoy more extensive rights and freedoms.

1. Expanding People’s Democratic Rights

China ensures the principal status of the people, and improves the system of people’s congresses, the system of CPC-led multiparty cooperation and political consultation, and the system of community-level self-governance. It has worked to diversify the forms of democracy and establish more democratic channels. People’s democratic rights are effectively protected.

Implementing orderly democratic election processes. Both rural and urban areas are represented by people’s congress deputies in proportion to their population, and all regions, ethnic groups, and sectors of society have a certain proportion of deputies.

To guarantee people’s rights to vote and to stand for election, deputies to the people’s congresses at the county level and below are directly elected, and measures are taken to ensure the elections are clean and the results are satisfactory to the people. In the elections to the people’s congresses at county and township levels beginning in 2016, more than 1 billion constituents cast votes for nearly 2.5 million deputies. There are now more than 2.6 million deputies to the people’s congresses at all five levels – the province, city, county, township, and village levels.

Steadily advancing socialist consultative democracy. Democratic consultation is applied extensively as a mechanism at multiple levels. The fields and procedures of consultation are well regulated. Extensive consultation is conducted on matters concerning overall economic and social development and related to the vital interests of the people.

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) serves as a major channel and specialized body for socialist consultative democracy. It has worked hard to play its role well and apply the results of consultation to good effect. Between January 2012 and June 2021, the CPPCC National Committee had received 58,768 proposals, 48,496 of which were placed on file. Most of the suggestions in the proposals were adopted and implemented.