The number of rural Chinese following the plough shrank by more
than 80 million between 1996 and 2006, according to the results of
a national agriculture census released online on Thursday.
At the end of 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
said, 70.8 percent of working rural people were engaged in some
type of agriculture -- farming, forestry, livestock breeding,
fishing and related services. That was nearly 5 percentage points
down from the end of 1996, the NBS said.
The rest were in the secondary and tertiary industries.
The number of migrant rural workers stood at 130 million, nearly
60 million more than a decade earlier, said the NBS, citing figures
from China's second national agriculture census.
Among migrant laborers, 64 percent were male, 82.1 percent were
aged below 40 and 80.1 percent were educated to at least junior
middle school level.
There were 530 million people in the labor force in rural
regions and about 480 million, or 90.1 percent, were working as of
the end of 2006, according to the census results.
These findings reflected conditions among 226 million rural
households nationwide.
China's rural survey is the largest in the world. The census
collected data on agricultural production, the rural labor force
and employment, rural living conditions and the environment of
rural communities. The first census was in 1996.
Agriculture remains the weakest link in the Chinese economy,
which has forged ahead with a double-digit annual growth and a
widening gap between cities and the countryside at the same
time.
The State Council issued last month the first policy document of
the year, vowing to set up a permanent mechanism of closing
urban-rural gaps.
The government has boosted investment in the countryside,
slashed fees and taxes for farmers, rolled out favorable medical
care schemes and strengthened protection of farmers' land rights
and migrant rural workers' interests.
Census figures show the mechanization level of agriculture was
lifted, with the share of land ploughed with machinery instead of
by labor power expanding 17.8 percentage points to 59.9 percent of
the total tilled earth.
It noted rural infrastructure was enhanced evidently, but
findings show 75.5 percent of villages in the whole country still
had no central water purifying systems, while 84.2 percent lacked
garbage treatment plants and 79.4 percent had unhygienic
toilets.
Hamlets with gym facilities or libraries only accounted for less
than 15 percent of the total. Licensed medical practitioners were
unavailable in 23.9 percent of all villages.
The central government was likely to raise its 2008 rural budget
to some 520 billion yuan (72.2 billion U.S. dollars) from last
year's 392 billion yuan, according to Chen Xiwen, director of the
Office of the Central Leading Group on Rural Work.
China invested 420 billion yuan last year in the countryside,
representing a record-high increase of 80 billion yuan from
2006.
(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2008)