President Hu Jintao (right) shakes hands with Wen Jiabao after Wen was approved as premier at a plenary meeting of the First Session of the 11th National People’s Congress in Beijing yesterday.—Xinhua

China's legislature has elected the country's top leadership at its on-going annual session.

Hu Jintao was re-elected president of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission at the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing on Saturday.

The fifth plenary meeting of the first session of the 11th congress also re-elected Wu Bangguo chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and elected former Shanghai Party Secretary Xi Jinping vice-president of China.

Wen Jiabao was approved yesterday by legislators to start another five-year term as Chinese premier, and Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou were approved to be vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China.

Wen will meet reporters at a press conference in Beijing tomorrow morning at the end of the parliament session.

Through secret ballot, Wang Shengjun was elected president of the Supreme People's Court, while Cao Jianming was elected procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

On Saturday, the legislature adopted a government plan to create five "super ministries" and streamline delivery of government services.

The reshuffle involves 15 government departments and reduces the number of Cabinet ministries and commissions to 27 from 28. The 2,967 deputies at Saturday's meeting also elected 13 people as vice-chairmen of the NPC Standing Committee.

The five "super ministries" established under the government plan are the Ministry of Industry and Information; the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security; the Ministry of Environmental Protection; the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction; and the Ministry of Transport.

The restructure also sets up a ministerial-level energy commission.

The plan puts the State Food and Drug Administration under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health, to clarify the ministry's responsibility for food and drug safety.

After the reshuffle, the National Development and Reform Commission will focus on macro-regulation and phase-out its involvement in economic micro-management.

The Ministry of Finance is to reform and improve its management of the budget and tax systems. The People's Bank of China, the central bank, is to strengthen the conduct of monetary policy and improve the exchange-rate mechanism.

The proposed institutional restructuring is a continuation of the previous five major government reshuffles over the past 30 years.

After overcoming countless barriers and scoring great achievements, China now faces some deeply-seated problems and has to make tremendous efforts for further progress.

The reform and opening-up drive, launched in late 1978, has helped the Chinese to get rid of poverty on the whole, and the nation is working to build a moderately prosperous society, which calls for streamlining the market and administrative systems.

"If the past reform was aimed at ensuring enough food and clothing for the people, it is now aimed at goals at a higher level," said Professor Wang Yukai of the National School of Administration.

Thirty years of reform and opening up have brought about historical changes in China's development - the planned economic system has been smashed gradually and a market economic system has basically shaped up, creating a rocketing economy that is now the fourth largest in the world, said Chi Fulin, executive president of China Institute for Reform and Development.

However, "resources and the environment, the widening income gap, and social fairness and justice are the major issues to be dealt with properly in the current reform," said Chi.