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PrintShenzhen works to meet residents' expectations
From: Shenzhen Municipal Talent Affairs Bureau
Shenzhen has given strategic priority to further improving the wellbeing of its residents, having recognized its fundamental role in the social governance system based on collaboration, participation, common benefits, and common prosperity. It has spared no effort to ensure that all talented people can achieve success as they aspire for a better life. To this end, the city has set a new benchmark in meeting residents' expectations regarding childcare, education, employment, medical services, elderly care, housing, and social assistance. On Aug. 1, 2022, Shenzhen officially implemented the country's first locally issued regulations on social governance, aiming to improve people's living standards and enhance their overall sense of happiness in all areas.
A consensus has now been reached in Shenzhen: Only by raising the quality of people's lives can the city expect to attract, retain, and make the best use of the brightest minds, because home is where the heart is.
Public service plays greater role in safeguarding people's wellbeing
Efforts have been made to enhance the city's mechanism for managing citizen services, strengthen service capabilities, and improve service levels.
By increasing the number of citizen services and social work stations to extend their reach and ensure that special groups and people in difficulty will get the support and care they need, community services in Shenzhen have undergone major transformations, thereby enhancing people's sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security.
Micro projects for improving people's well-being
Shenzhen has innovated the supply side of people's livelihood services by focusing on micro well-being projects and programs. In 2021 alone, the city spent over 1.3 billion yuan on implementing a total of 12,000 micro well-being projects and programs.
"Micro well-being projects" help resolve issues that are of great concern to a large number of residents living in a community, and are closely related to people’s daily lives. They fall into three types, namely: services projects, goods-related projects, and engineering projects. They are mainly for the convenience and benefit of the public, and also include mass activities, public welfare events, public facilities, and other projects and programs deemed eligible to receive the special funds meted out to improve local residents' quality of life.
The micro projects are decided through democratic procedures including collecting proposals from residents, holding discussions at community Party committees, and deliberating solutions by subdistrict offices. Each community in the city can expect to receive 1 million yuan in grants every year from the city government, and another 1 million yuan from the district government, giving full play to the "leverage" role of fiscal funds and the "guiding" function of policies to improve people’s livelihoods. Social funds and local wisdom will be pooled together to help deal with the problems and challenges people face in their daily lives.
Access to quality childcare
Access to a high-quality, affordable childcare system is critical to a family and a city's future. To meet residents' potential demand for childcare, Shenzhen has been exploring ways to increase the availability of child nursery services.From 2017-2021, the city’s national fiscal education spending amounted to 429.8 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of about 23%. Kindergarteners can enjoy a subsidy of 1,500 yuan per person per year to support their healthy growth, while inclusive private kindergartens can receive a subsidy of no less than 40,000 yuan per class per year.
Despite the existence of some thorny issues confronting the city, such as limited land resources, Shenzhen has vigorously pushed forward with the provision of more schools to meet the higher demand brought about by rapid population growth, allowing more children to have the opportunity to enjoy a high-quality education, and giving more help to the offspring of newly designated citizens.
Measures have also been taken to reduce the burden of homework and off-campus training for compulsory education students, and to achieve full coverage of after-school services in compulsory education schools.Moreover, Shenzhen was the first city in Guangdong to set up a regulatory department overseeing off-campus training institutions.
Access to quality education
Shenzhen launched a subsidy program in 2004 to provide financial assistance to needy college students in terms of tuition, living allowances, and scholarships. The program is open to applicants from families that receive minimum living allowances as well as financially strapped families, in addition to people living in extreme poverty as recognized by the Shenzhen Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau. The applicants must be students who have been admitted full-time to domestic colleges and universities through the National College Entrance Examination. They can be junior college students, undergraduates, postgraduates, and doctoral students. Junior high school graduates who will study in colleges for five years and obtain a college diploma upon graduation can apply for the subsidy from their fourth academic year.
The tuition subsidy ranges up to 20,000 yuan per person per academic year, while the living allowance subsidy is 3,000 yuan per person for each academic year. A scholarship between 2,000 and 5,000 yuan will be issued to students according to the honors they receive from their school.
Applicants can submit their applications between Aug. 1 and Oct. 30 every year. They can search the WeChat accounts of “深圳民政” (szminzheng) or “深圳市慈善会” (szscsh), select “j救助平台,” then “雏鹰展翅计划” and fill in the relevant information and submit all the materials according to the appropriate guidelines. Applications can also be made offline at the Shenzhen Charity Federation, located on the third floor of Block B at Zhongmin Times Plaza in Luohu District.
As of 2021, the program had invested approximately 21.94 million yuan in grants to help 7,171 students from low-income families realize their college dreams.
Shenzhen is committed to creating more and better job opportunities while also continuously upgrading its employment-first policy and striving to achieve the goals of providing workers with good jobs and opportunities for their all-around development.
From Jan. 1, 2022, Shenzhen adjusted its basic pension for retirees as well as the standard minimum wage. The monthly minimum wage for full-time workers in Shenzhen was adjusted to 2,360 yuan, while the hourly minimum wage for part-time workers was changed to 22.2 yuan. The city's employed population reached 12.4801 million by the end of July 2022, almost matching its historical high (12.494 million) and representing a month-on-month increase of 0.3%. There were 9.971 million migrant workers in the city, and 112,900 new jobs were created.
Employees in Shenzhen are covered by the social insurance programs and are eligible to benefit from basic old-age insurance, basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work injury insurance and maternity insurance. Qualified high-caliber talents can receive a talent card, which allows their spouses and children to enjoy one-on-one services at the social security service halls across the city.
For mainland applicants:
For applicants from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan
For foreign applicants
Access to quality medical services
Since Shenzhen initiated the Sanming Project to encourage outside medical resources to establish a presence in the city, a number of respected medical schools, hospitals, and hospital management organizations from home and abroad have joined hands with local medical institutions in setting up municipal hospitals. The city has also introduced 251 high-level medical teams and identified more than 1,100 top-notch talents, bringing first-rate hospital management systems, medical talents and technology to Shenzhen.
By 2025, Shenzhen aims to establish a high-quality and highly efficient medical and health care system, and become known as an international health care center.
Access to quality elderly care
Millions of elderly people are living in this young city in South China. They are either builders of early Shenzhen who helpedturna remote fishing village into a boomtown, or those who flockedhere to be with their children who are working in the city. To meet the high standards it set for itself in terms of the accessibility of elderly care services, Shenzhen has been launching, revising and refining various subsidy policies, vigorously promoting the high-quality development of elderly care services, and also pushing innovate service models.
Community services for the elderly
By October 2022, Shenzhen had set up 75 elderly care institutions, 26 subdistrict service centers, 11 pilot demonstration subdistricts for national smart and healthy elderly care applications, and 161 community nursing homes. The city is now focusing on building a "four-level elderly care service network" encompassing subdistricts, communities, residential compounds and families. It is planned that at least one elderly care service station will be built in each aging community, and care facilities will be available in housing estates or residential compounds, so the elderly can enjoy high-quality services within a 15-minutewalk of their home.
Canteens for the elderly
Shenzhen launched its elderly dining subsidy program in March 2019, providing a subsidy of 15 yuan per meal for people aged over 60 who are facing financial difficulties, and 5 yuan for local hukou holders aged 70 and above. As of October 2022, Shenzhen had built 400 canteens for elderly citizens across the city.
Yinian cards
Meanwhile, more than 800,000 elderly people in the city have received Yinian cards, which are senior citizen ID cards designed to facilitate access to free public transportation, free entry to parks, as well as subsidies, and priority medical and other services.
Elderly-friendly home renovation
Elderly-friendly home renovations and improvements were conducted with government subsidies in over 2,000 household by October 2022, and smart home care equipment was installed in the homes of 5,731 poverty-stricken seniors with disabilities and those who live alone, providing a number of crucial services such as health monitoring and emergency assistance.
Access to quality housing
In recent years, Shenzhen has continued to increase housing construction and supply to meet its residents' needs for quality housing. During the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), Shenzhen supplied 1,121.8 hectares of residential land, with 382.6 hectares allocated for public housing projects. Moreover, 786,300 housing units were built or acquired during this period, including 442,400 public housing units.
People can log in to the "i深圳“ app, a digital platform that provides all-inclusive government and life services for residents and enterprises, to check the details of their housing provident fund accounts. They can also use this to apply for the online withdrawal of provident funds, and view the application guidelines for public rental housing and government-subsidized housing, among other services.
Toensurethose in financial distress can still enjoy a certain standard of living, give play to the role of temporary assistance grants, and optimize relief endeavors, Shenzhen has promulgated and implemented a raft of regulations to assist low-income residents, provide a subsistence allowance program, offer relief to people with disabilities, and deliver aid packages to those living in extreme poverty, among other social benefits.
Ensuring the ‘bottom line’ of social aid
To scale up their assistance and support for people in dire straits and ensure their essential needs are met, local authorities in Shenzhen grant subsistence allowances, living allowances and additional one-off living subsidies to registered low-income residents and the extremely poor. Social benefits have been delivered through the distribution of in-kind goods, the provision of services, and other methods. At the same time, the distribution of relief funds is randomly checked every quarter to ensure they are reaching people in distress on time and in full on a monthly basis.
Expanding relief
Eligible beneficiaries have been allowed to apply in geographical areas where they are experiencing temporary difficulties. Previously, they were required to file for relief benefits only in the area where their household registration or permanent residence was based.
In terms of relief funds, the cumulative amount can now equate to to 36 months of the minimum living allowances granted to needy families. This can be further increased under special circumstances. In the first eight months of 2022, the city provided temporary assistance to 747 people and disbursed 2.56 million yuan in temporary relief funds.