No. 1 Central Document prioritizes poverty relief
A farmer in Gansu Province harvesting potatoes Photo: Wang Jiang/CHINA DAILY
Issues relating to agriculture, rural areas and rural people remain China’s top priorities for the 17th consecutive year, as this year’s No. 1 Central Document released on Feb. 5 stresses poverty alleviation and improving rural weak links.
As the first policy statement released by China’s central authorities each year, the document is seen as an indicator of policy priorities. This year it urged efforts on two main tasks—winning the battle against poverty and strengthening areas of weakness concerning agriculture, rural areas and rural people, as the country strives to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects this year.
The country will move to win the battle against poverty, improve infrastructure and public services in rural areas, ensure adequate supply of important agricultural products, increase rural people’s incomes, strengthen grassroots governance in rural areas and improve rural weak links, according to the document.
It noted work should be done to maintain social harmony and stability in rural areas and enable rural people to feel more satisfied, happy and secure. It also demanded efforts to promote high-quality agricultural development.
China aims to achieve its goal of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects this year, which also marks the last year for the country to win the battle against poverty.
Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at the Rural Development Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that winning the battle against poverty requires us to complete the remaining tasks of poverty alleviation in all respects. More importantly, we should consolidate our present accomplishments in poverty alleviation, enhance them and prevent the return to poverty.
China has achieved decisive success in poverty alleviation through unremitting efforts, said Wang Xingguo, deputy Party secretary of the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences. However, infrastructure in rural areas is still unsatisfactory. Education, healthcare, culture and other public services have also been lagging behind for a long time. As such, providing rural residents with equivalent access to water, electricity, road, network and other infrastructure along with education, healthcare and cultural public services available in urban areas should be the task of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
“Promoting agricultural production, rural people’s incomes and rural development has been the eternal theme of work related to agriculture, rural areas and rural people,” said Wu Laping, a professor from the College of Economics and Management at China Agricultural University (CAU).
Wei Longbao, deputy director of the China Academy for Rural Development at Zhejiang University, said that sufficient agricultural production and efficient supply of important agricultural products is essential to stabilizing commodity prices and expectations as well as ensuring people’s wellbeing.
With the implementation of supportive agricultural policies, rural people’s incomes have been growing continuously, maintaining an annual growth rate of 8% to 10% in recent years, said Tang Lixia, a professor from the College of Humanities and Development Studies at CAU. However, wage income and operating income account for a relatively high proportion of rural people’s incomes. This requires a continuous increase in agricultural production subsidies and promotion of non-agricultural employment for rural people to ensure a stable growth of these two sources of income.
In terms of rural people’s expenditure, Tang said that as per capita expenditures on education and medical care are relatively high, increasing subsidies on rural education and healthcare and reducing rural people’s expenditures can also be regarded as a good way of reverse income generation.
Increasing rural people’s operating income is the most difficult aspect of increasing rural people’s incomes. Wang said that moderate production scale, good social services, appropriate industrial chain extension and industrial integration tailored to local conditions are all options for increasing grain farmers’ incomes.
edited by NIU XIAOQIAN