January 10

The Western-Region Development Office of the State Council held a teleconference on the work of restoring farmland to forests, and decided to carry out the project of restoring farmland to forests on a full scale based on the pilot work over the past two years. On December 14, the State Council issued the Regulations on Restoring Farmland to Forests.

July 4

The opening ceremony for the First West-East Gas Pipeline Project (from Lunnan in Xinjiang to Shanghai) was held. After that, the Second and Third West-East Gas Pipeline Projects were launched.

September 12

Jiang Zemin addressed the National Conference on Re-employment, and pointed out that employment was the foundation of people’s livelihoods. On September 30, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Circular on Further Promoting the Re-employment of Laid-off and Unemployed People, which established a basic framework for an active employment policy.

October 19

The CPC Central Committee and the State Council adopted the Decision on Further Strengthening the Health Work in Rural Areas. By the end of June 2008, a new rural cooperative medical system covered 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

November 8–14

The 16th CPC National Congress was held. The report entitled “Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in all Respects and Creating a New Situation for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” adopted in the meeting proposed the goals for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and expounded the basic requirement for putting the Important Theory of Three Represents into full effect. The Congress adopted the Constitution of the Communist Party of China (Revised), established the Important Theory of Three Represents as the guiding ideology of the CPC along with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, and incorporated it into the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.

November 15

At the 1st Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee, Hu Jintao was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Jiang Zemin was appointed as chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission, and Wu Guanzheng was appointed as secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

December 5–6

Hu Jintao together with the members of the Central Secretariat of the CPC visited Xibaipo in Pingshan County, Hebei Province, where they reviewed Mao Zedong’s important expositions of the “two imperatives.”

December 27

The opening ceremonies of the South-North Water Transfer Project were held at the same time at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and the construction sites in Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. On November 15, 2013, the first phase of the eastern route of the South-North Water Transfer Project began operation. On December 12, 2014, the first phase of the middle route of the Project began operation.

From:Chronicle of the People's Republic of China(October 1949—September 2019),edited by The Institute of Party History and Literature of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, PP.184-186.