On April 12, Li Keqiang, premier of the State Council, held the new government's first expert and entrepreneur seminar on economic situation at the first meeting room of the State Council, listening to opinions and proposals from the experts and entrepreneurs on the current economic situation. Yan Ping, chairman of Guangxi Yuchai Machinery Group Co., Ltd., was invited to the seminar as a representative of entrepreneurs in the machinery industry, speaking on the actualities, development, transformation and upgrading of the industry.

At the seminar, Yan briefly introduced the market situation of the machinery industry and predicted the market trend in 2013. To promote industrial development, he made a proposal that efforts should be made to further straighten out the coordination mechanism of propelling the implementation of higher emission regulations to motor vehicles by subsidizing the purchase of medium and heavy-duty trucks up to National IV emission standard, promoting the standardization of all oil products before National IV emission standard comes into effect and encouraging the development of Chinese independent diesel engines, and stepping up efforts to improve core technologies of domestic electronically controlled diesel injection systems and diesel engine after-treatment devices; to further simplify vehicle announcement administration; to put into effect the rules for implementing the Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Intensifying Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in the Internal Combustion Engine Industry as soon as possible; to keep the price ratio of natural gas to gasoline & diesel under 0.65:1 and promote the development of engines burning clean energy; and to intensify production capacity building, prevent industrial overcapacity, duly develop the cyclic economy through remanufacturing and accomplish sustainable development.

Li showed strong interest in Yan's speech, interposing and questioning from time to time, exchanging ideas with Yan on the development of machine building, energy conservation, environmental protection and the transformation and upgrading of China's economy. Li said, "We need to gain a firm foothold and focus on transformation and upgrading in order to grasp macro policies. Priority should be given to transformation and upgrading to upgrade China's economy. Efforts should be made to advance transformation in the short term and the long term to accomplish upgrading."

A total of ten experts, scholars and entrepreneur representatives present delivered speeches. Apart from Yan, enterprise representatives who spoke included Lu Qizhou, president of China Power Investment Corporation; Fang Hongbo, chairman of Midea Group and Li Rucheng, Youngor Group.

After listening to the speeches of the scholars and entrepreneurs, Li said, China's economy started smoothly overall since the beginning of this year, which is conductive to stabilizing expectations of all sides. At the same time, we should notice that there are still many unstable and uncertain factors in international and domestic environment, deep-rooted problems have been emerging endlessly and the situation has been complex. We should enhance predictability and be skilled in seeking regular and tendentious things in volatile changes in order to grasp the trend of the macro economy, which is vital to the continuous and healthy development of the economy. With predictability, enterprises and the society will be able to allocate resources more rationally and duly make decisions; the government will know what to do, think before acting, plan ahead and cope with challenges calmly.

Li stressed that development must be sustained through reform deepening. Aiming at the deep-rooted problems of China's economy such as imbalance, lack of coordination and unsustainability, we should suit remedies to cases, resolve problems and root causes. Fundamentally, we should rely on reforms, consolidate the foundation and invigorate economic development through reforms. Even though some temporary measures should be released, we must note that these measures should not obstruct the future advancement of market-based reforms and development. We should pay attention to forming long-acting institutional arrangements conductive to sustaining development, constantly release reform dividends and promote the sustained and healthy development of the economy.

Present the seminar were Vice Premiers Zhang Gaoli, Liu Yandong, Wang Yang and Ma Kai; State Councilors Yang Jing and Wang Yong; as well as heads of ministries and commissions.