The Ministry of Civil Affairs recently released the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Civil Affairs" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), outlining arrangements for civil affairs work during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

The Plan emphasizes that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the development of civil affairs must take promoting high-quality development as its theme, better serving the modernization of socialism with Chinese characteristics as its main line, meeting the people's needs for a better life as its goal, and comprehensively deepening reform as its driving force. It highlights systematic, holistic, and coordinated approaches, and calls for strengthening inclusive, foundational, and bottom-line livelihood development.

The Plan proposes that by 2030, Party building in civil affairs departments at all levels will be comprehensively strengthened; the policy and institutional system, service guarantee system, supervision and management system, and social participation system will be further improved; the levels of work in elderly care and aged services, social assistance, social welfare, social affairs, and social governance will be further elevated; and solid strides will be made in the high-quality development of civil affairs.

By the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, multiple key development indicators are proposed, including: the proportion of nursing-type beds in elderly care institutions reaching 73%; the proportion of elderly care workers in elderly care institutions who have obtained vocational skill level certificates reaching 65%; the coverage rate of county-level comprehensive elderly care service management platforms reaching 80%; the coverage rate of township (subdistrict) regional elderly care service centers reaching 60%; the coverage rate of community elderly care service institutions and facilities reaching 70%; the social activity participation rate of the elderly reaching 60%; the coverage rate of grassroots elderly associations reaching 80%; the coverage rates of living subsidies for impoverished persons with disabilities and nursing subsidies for severely disabled persons, as well as the basic living guarantee coverage rate for orphans and de facto unsupported children, remaining at 100%; the rate of child welfare institutions implementing "open-door operation" reaching 50%; and the proportion of social organizations with no records of adverse credit information reaching 93%.

The Plan deploys over 30 key tasks in areas such as actively responding to population aging, improving the social assistance system, raising the level of social welfare guarantees, optimizing social affairs management services, and strengthening and innovating social governance. It specifies multiple comprehensive reform tasks, including advancing the classified reform of elderly care institutions, the reform of social organization management systems, the "efficiently handling one matter" reform, marriage customs reform, and funeral and interment reform. It also deploys nine major engineering projects: the building of an age-friendly society, the construction of elderly care service facilities, a special initiative for technological responses to population aging, the construction of child welfare institutions, the construction of welfare facilities for persons with disabilities, the construction of public welfare funeral and interment service facilities, the empowerment of social organization development, sunshine charity, and administrative division and place name management services.

The Plan requires upholding and strengthening the Party's overall leadership, strengthening policy coordination and safeguards, improving implementation mechanisms, and enhancing monitoring and evaluation to ensure the full implementation of the Plan's tasks.