Editor's note: On the eve of the Spring Festival, China Economic Weekly specially planned "2010 Questionnaire Survey for Mayors on People's Livelihood", and issued People's Livelihood Questionnaire to mayors from more than 40 cities above prefecture level of 20 provinces and autonomous regions in the country, which covers income distribution, employment, housing, environmental protection, education, medical treatment and other topics in various fields concerned with people's livelihood. At present, the Questionnaire has been answered in succession. China Economic Weekly took some "answers" from them and published some questions and answers. GANNAN DAILY reproduces part of them today as follows.

What Does Our Mayor Think About?

Q: What are the most urgent problems in the city that you govern? Then what are the difficulties to solve the problems?

Ganzhou City Mayor Wang Ping: Employment and housing.

Employment is the immediate problem of people's livelihood for the people of Ganzhou. As old revolutionary base areas, Ganzhou has weak industrial base and weak economic foundation. Compared with the developed regions, Ganzhou lags fairly far behind. Despite of rich human resources, new jobs cannot meet the demand of labor force growth. The quality and skills of workers fall far short of expectations of enterprises. For job seekers, there is a wide gap between aspirations and reality. These factors result in the difficult employment situation.

Housing issue, particularly for low-income families, is another immediate problem of people's livelihood for Ganzhou. The reasons are mainly as follows. 1. Prices of commercial residential building remain high and pressures of house buying remain high as well. 2. Affordable houses construction is entirely invested by government, but there are difficulties for finances all over the city and in implementation of local counterpart funds. 3. Due to the high cost of renovation of shantytowns (old and dilapidated houses), developers are not interested in that generally and there is high pressure on the government's commitment to this task. 4. There are difficulties in implementing preferential policies for affordable houses construction, mainly involving fees exemption in water, electricity, gas, and other monopoles sectors.

Q: What is the most important support from the central government for the city that you govern in 2010?

Ganzhou City Mayor Wang Ping: To become the pilot city for "New Citizen Project".

Ganzhou needs the most important support from the central government for becoming the pilot city of "New Citizen Project". Ganzhou will build 10000 suites of new citizen apartments in 2010 and 30000 suites of new citizen apartments in three years, to solve the dwelling and related problems for migrant workers in the city. We hope the central government can offer strong support in capital and land use index.

Q: What do you most want to say to your people in 2010?

Ganzhou City Mayor Wang Ping: We will regard safeguarding and improving people's livelihood as the starting point and the goal of expanding domestic demand and share the fruits of development with public as far as possible.