The year 2021 was of milestone significance in the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and China. Against the grim situation of major changes combined with a pandemic, both unseen in a century, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core rallied the whole Party and nation to forge ahead and accomplish the tasks of reform and development. The country won the battle of poverty alleviation as scheduled, achieved full success in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and fulfilled the First Centenary Goal. China maintained a leading position in the world in economic development and epidemic control, with progress made in strategic scientific and technological strength, industrial chain resilience, reform and opening-up, people's livelihoods and ecological civilization, and got off to a good start for the 14^th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).

Under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) has adhered to the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, coordinated epidemic control with economic and social development, and implemented the requirement of enhancing the quality, efficiency, and sustainability of our proactive fiscal policy. On one hand, we focused our attention on the expenditure scale and policy intensity while taking a balanced approach to both ensuring steady growth and guarding against risks, and we maintained the continuity, stability and sustainability of fiscal policy, avoided sharp turns, set reasonable targets for the fiscal deficit and local government special bond quota, kept expenditures at an appropriate scale and took practical measures to defuse local government debt risks. On the other hand, with a view to optimizing the expenditure structure and enhancing management, we established a system for the regular transfer of fiscal funds directly allocated to grassroots-level governments with a focus on timeliness, precision and efficiency. We improved fiscal expenditure efficiency, implemented the requirement that “all Party and government agencies live on tight budgets”, optimized expenditure structure, guaranteed and improved people’s livelihoods, and enhanced performance and efficiency of fund utilization, making new progress in fostering the new development paradigm and achieving high-quality development.