The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the
State Council jointly released the year's No. 1 central government
document aiming to set up a permanent mechanism that can close the
urban-rural development gap.
Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of the Central Leading Group
on Rural Work, described the document as "high-profile" and "with
clear-cut subject" at a press conference of the State Council on
Thursday in Beijing.
The following are the new problems he identified facing rural
China after the country has pushed forward the economic reform for
30 years:
-- The country needs a permanent mechanism of industry promoting
agriculture and urban areas helping rural areas. Agriculture
remains the weakest link in national economy. A new pattern that
can integrate the economic and social development in urban and
rural China must be formed;
-- Growing resources and environmental restrictions will
continue to dampen agricultural development while increasing
pressure from the international market may aggravate the tight
balance between domestic supply and demand of agricultural
products;
--Inadequate investment in infrastructure construction, limited
job opportunities for farmers, outdated rural social administration
and public services in rural areas are still impeding the
development of agricultural and rural economy;
-- Reduction of arable land, lack of fresh water resources,
inadequate support of finance and technology and aging water
conservancy facilities restrict the stable development of
agriculture.
SOLUTIONS
-- Expand the budget for agriculture, the governmental
investment in rural infrastructure and governmental land-use fee
allocated to rural areas;
-- Plough back the revenues from till-land occupation tax and
city maintenance fee into agriculture and rural economy;
-- Increase the projects benefiting public welfare and
biological environment in the most poverty-stricken counties;
-- Increase direct subsidies for cereal crops cultivation,
purchasing of quality seeds, farm tools and other productive
materials;
-- Forming a pattern to increase agricultural efficiency and
farmers' incomes;
-- Vigorously ramp up oil production, encourage cotton and sugar
production, guarantee staple food production including meat,
poultry, eggs, milk and vegetables to ease short supply of
agricultural products;
-- Reinforce agriculture standardization and guarantee safety of
agricultural products, prop up agricultural industrialization,
strengthen and improve controls on the agricultural market;
-- Prioritize water control in rural infrastructure
construction, including supporting water conservancy projects on
small farmland, encouraging water-saving irrigation, restoring
crumbling reservoirs, intensifying farmland protection and soil
amelioration, strengthening ecological rehabilitation and stepping
up agricultural mechanization;
-- Continue to improve rural compulsory education, improve new
rural cooperative medical systems, improve the minimum rural living
allowance and improve rural poverty alleviation standards;
-- Uphold the basic system for rural operations, deepen rural
reform and set up primary Party organizations in rural areas,
especially to fully guarantee land rights to farmers, urge the
reforms of the township institutions and the fiscal management
system at county and township levels, advance the reform of the
system of collective forest rights, renovate rural financial
system, properly settle debts in rural areas.
-- Enforce the legal rights of migrant workers, form an equal
employment system for rural and urban labors and explore approaches
for the farmers who have a stable job and residence in cities to
gain a status as a city resident, establish the mechanisms of
regular pay increase and pay guarantee, and enhance their
employment, social security, housing and their children's
education.
(Xinhua News Agency January 31, 2008)