Zang Min, a 43-year-old beekeeper, used to lead a merry life,
but smiles are fading away from his face since he can hardly make a
profit from his honey export to the United States as before.
Zang, a native of Hushan village in Feidong County of east
China's Anhui Province, could score a net income of 50,000 yuan
(US$6,210) each year before the U.S. imposed an anti-dumping tariff
as high as 183 percent on China's honey products.
"I was traveling with my bees and collecting honey around the
country last year, but I eventually failed to recover my expenses
after selling the honey to the United States ," Zang said.
The sudden changes in the external environment have plunged
Zang's life into a predicament.
Zang, who has been in the trade for eight years, is raising only
100 hives of bees as against 150 in the past, since "the more you
raise, the more you loose," he complained.
However, Zang's life is likely to have a turn for the better,
thanks to the historic decision of the central government to rally
all possible resources to change the backward situation in the vast
rural areas.
The participants to the annual sessions of China's top
legislature and advisory body will mull over the hot topic of
building a new countryside.
Zang hopes that the decision will help many poverty-stricken
areas including his native village become prosperous and rich like
many parts of the country.
The fourth sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which
are taken as significant political events in China, will be held on
March 3 and March 5 successively.
"My family and I are expecting good news from the NPC and CPPCC
annual sessions," Zang said.
The ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) hopes to boost rural
productivity, improve infrastructure construction, promote social
development and deepen democracy in the countryside as well as
increase the living standards of farmers, Chen Xiwen, deputy
director of the Office of the Central Financial Work Leading Group
said.
Kang Shaobang, a research fellow with the Research Institute of
International Strategies under the Party School of the CPC Central
Committee, said international background and other factors were
also taken into consideration when the Party was considering a
making such a decision.
Chinese President Hu Jintao
said in the opening remarks at the seminar for provincial and
central government ministers on building a new countryside that the
global economic development is becoming more unbalanced, the
competition for resources, markets, technologies and talented
personnel is turning scorching, and trade protectionism is a common
thing.
All these are posing new threats to China's economic and social
development.
According to a report recently published by the Organization for
European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the assistance and subsidies
granted to farmers by EU countries account for 34 percent of
farmers' total income, those by the United States 20 percent, and
58 percent and 64 percent respectively in Japan and the Republic of
Korea, but only 6 percent in China.
Experts said that trade protectionism has forced many Chinese
including beekeeper Zang fall to become victims.
The losses of China's agricultural products have run up to
billions of dollars due to green and technology barriers set by
some foreign countries.
Therefore, China is making hard efforts to reduce its heavy
dependence on investment and export and is set to maintain steady
and rapid development by fueling more domestic demand, experts
said.
China's dependence on foreign trade was high as 60 percent last
year, but consumption only contributed 33 percent to economic
development.
Lan Haitao, an expert from the Macroeconomics Research Academy
under the State Development and Reform Commission, said that the
goal (of building socialist countryside) can not be reached without
significant improvement in rural consumption power.
"The rural market is the stabilizer of China's economy in the
future," he said.
Tang Min, chief economist with the Asian Development Bank's
China office, echoed his view, saying the construction of a new
countryside can help solve the problem.
In China's rural areas, where the population accounts for 72
percent of the country's total, the proportion of retail sales of
consumer goods in the total retail sales of consumer goods has
dropped from 65.7 percent in 1980 to 32.9 percent in 2005. The
expanding income disparity between urban and rural areas, which is
3.22: 1, constitutes the main factor in this regard.
Peace, development and cooperation remain the irresistible trend
of the times, but the international environment is changing rapidly
and unpredictably. Factors leading to instability and uncertainty
in peace and development are on the rise, and are posing new
challenges to China's security.
"Only when the problems relating to agriculture, rural areas and
farmers have been solved properly, can China's economy develop in
the correct direction," said a CPC document.
"It is an important historic mission China must accomplish on
its road toward modernization," it said. "This should become a
common understanding of the entire Party and the whole
society."
(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2006)