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Lots of people have recently been discussing the concept of building a "new socialist countryside," which was put forward by the central government late last year.

To attain such a goal, we need to take into account the real situation in the countryside, while also tackling the issue from a wider perspective than rural rejuvenation.

A number of policies have been suggested and drawn up since the new drive was launched.

This is fine, but it has also resulted in an unwelcome side effect creating false hopes that the goal of substantially improving rural areas' social and economic landscape can be achieved in a relatively short time.

Many experts have been quick to warn about this false sense of optimism.

Realizing the complexity of the situation, China has changed its concept of agricultural modernization, shifting from a blanket approach to one where relatively prosperous coastal regions and the suburban areas of big cities to take the lead, according to Wen Tiejun, a renowned agricultural economist and dean of the School of Agricultural and Rural Development at Renmin University of China.

Given the low development level of China's rural areas, we must be realistic about the situation in China's rural areas, Wen told a recent seminar on rural development organized by Beijing Young Journalists' Association.

Wen warned that people should not view rural issues from an "urban or international perspective." Rural production conditions have not fundamentally changed compared with two decades ago, so how can we realize modernization in such circumstances? Wen asked.

A Chinese farmer ploughs an average of 0.6 hectare of land, while his US counterpart owns a farm covering more than 100 hectares. This means it will be very hard to improve the efficiency of individual-based Chinese farming, no matter what modern methods are adopted, said Wen.

"We should not copy the American model of agricultural industrialization. Not only does it fail to provide a solution to our problems, it is also a model that our environment can ill afford," Wen added.

In answer to calls for agricultural industrialization, Wen has proposed a new "organic agriculture," warning that industrialization would harm the environment, while agricultural production will fall if such methods are not used.

Wen and his colleagues, who are leading some teams experimenting with the idea of building organic agricultural parks in rural or suburban areas, have tried to organize farmers to form cooperative associations and create self-recycled facilities in rural areas, where chemical fertilizer and pesticides are not used.

This is part of the recycling economy, a new development philosophy newly mapped out by Chinese policy-makers.

Wen said that the next step is to spread these experiences to other regions, blazing a trail for rural sustainable development.

Zhang Ming, a politics professor at Renmin University of China, said he had a high regard for Wen's proposals, but said that they would be difficult to implement.

The traditional environmentally friendly mode of farming has been irretrievably changed by Western production methods, said Zhang. The solution to China's rural problems does not lie in a return to old traditions.

But Sun Liping, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, said Wen's approach should not be ruled out. It could be one of many ways to rejuvenate rural areas, but should not be regarded as a panacea.

Sun said: "There is a potential danger lying in new things and it is not so simple to return to the old practices (if they prove inapplicable)."

Sun suggested that the relationship between rural and urban areas should also be borne in mind when rural issues are tackled, claiming the rural-urban gap is one of the major reasons for this rural predicament.

Urban residents earn about 3.22 times as much as their rural counterparts, according to official figures. But experts estimate that if the non-salary benefits of urban residents are taken into consideration, the gap could be up to six times.

"The really serious problem does not lie in the gap itself," said Sun. The income divide means vast differences in purchasing power while they face the same integrated market with unified prices, whether it is for higher education or healthcare.

Sun held that the gap in consumption power may brew a crisis as consumers shift their focus from daily necessities, such as food, to expensive consumer durables, such as houses and cars.

"The drive to build a 'new countryside', in my opinion, signals a new and pragmatic policy outlook, in which different solutions are applied to different problems," he said.

First, the policy encourages farmers to increase production value. Chinese agriculture's rate of added value is currently about 38 percent, meaning the value can be increased by 38 percent after production.

Second, the new policy encourages population flow from rural to urban areas, creating more development opportunities for those remaining in the countryside.

Third, the state will increase its rural spending. But it must also ensure that these funds are not frittered away, Sun pointed out. Sun proposed that part of the money the state is investing on rural development should be earmarked to reduce or wipe out small rural enterprises' tax burden.

"Those small rural enterprises are sources of stable employment, something which helps improve the nation's overall purchasing power," Sun said.

(China Daily June 13, 2006)