The following are the major projects China is set to undertake to boost the building of a new countryside during the 2006-2010 period, listed in the draft guidelines of the five-year development guidelines, being deliberated by Chinese lawmakers at their ongoing annual session:

-- Large grain, cotton and edible oil production bases and quality grain industrial projects, which also involve breeding of improved strains, plant disease and insect pest prevention and control, and popularization of farm machinery.

-- Fertile soil projects, aimed at transforming medium- and low- yield farmland into high-yield cropland.

-- Crop protection projects, aimed at improving grassroots centers for harmful organism monitoring and control, building some demonstration bases for locust control by ecological and biological means, farm chemical safety testing centers and biotechnology testing centers, to reduce to the minimum the dangers brought about by plant diseases, insect pests, weeds, mice and other harmful living things.

-- Transformation of large irrigated areas and that of the large draining pump stations in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui.

-- Improved strain and fine breed projects, aimed at building of crop germplasm resources banks, crop improvement centers, fine strain breeding bases, farms of live stock, poultry and aquiculture pure breeds, aquiculture genetics and breeding centers, crop germplasm resources farms and testing centers.

-- Animal epidemic prevention system, comprised of six subsystems for animal disease monitoring, prevention and control, quarantine and supervision, veterinary medicine quality supervision and remnant control, and technical support and material supply for animal epidemic prevention.

-- Agricultural product quality control and safety supervision system, at national, regional, provincial and county levels.

-- Rural drinking water safety, aimed to provide safe drinking water to 100 million rural residents.

-- Rural roads, aimed at building and transforming 1.2 kilometers of rural roads leading to all towns and villages with ready conditions.

-- Rural methane, mainly for daily use in rural households, in addition to large and medium-sized projects in some large animal and poultry farms.

-- Electricity to village and green energy county projects, aimed at establishing 50 green energy demonstration counties, and enable 3.5 million rural households without power supply to enjoy electricity.

-- Rural medical care system, mainly to cover rural areas in central and west China.

-- Rural family planning service system, mainly to cover rural areas in central and west China. -- Transfer of rural labor force aimed at providing technical training and employment service to rural laborers.

(Xinhua News Agency March 6, 2006)