Chinese Premier stresses importance of human resources, talent for high-quality development

BEIJING - Premier Li Keqiang has called for drawing on China's human resources and talents to lift the country's industries to a medium-to-high end and to achieve high-quality development.

He made the statement Tuesday when delivering a report on economic and social development to the 19th Meeting of the Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the 14th Meeting of the Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Noting that China's economy had been stabilizing and improving, Li said China, as the world's largest developing country, still faced major uncertainty caused by a complicated external environment, and problems and new challenges accumulated domestically.

"While we must have full confidence in China's development, we should also avoid over-anxiety for success, and must engage in unostentatious hard work," he said.

Calling human resources and talent the biggest advantage for China's development, Li called for prioritizing job creation by improving services for job-seeking and starting new businesses, and putting education first by maintaining increases in education investment.

Li called for encouraging enterprises to invest more by boosting government investment and promoting international cooperation in R&D.

The premier called for more efforts to solve problems in research project application, management of funds, talents evaluation, and the earnings distribution.

He also called for significantly increasing the award for national science and technology prizes.