Rural revitalization was proposed for the first time in the Report of the 19th National People’s Congress in 2017. In September 2018, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council issued the Strategic Plan for Rural Revitalization (2018-2022), which requires all departments across the country to implement it.
According to targets set out by the Central Rural Work Conference held in late December 2020 in Beijing, by 2035, there will be decisive progress on rural revitalization and agricultural and rural areas will be basically modernized. By 2050, rural revitalization will be fully attained, achieving the goal of strengthening agriculture, constructing a beautiful countryside and enriching farmers. This year’s No.1 central document includes and elaborates more policy arrangements on how to achieve these goals.
The document proposes speeding up the modernization of agriculture, including ensuring the supply of grain and major agricultural products, enhancing the seed industry, retaining a red line of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) of arable land, and building a modern rural industrial system.
Regarding countryside beautification, the document states it is necessary to vigorously implement rural construction plans, including speeding up village planning, strengthening infrastructure, upgrading essential public services and speeding up integration of urban and rural development within the county domain.
While enriching farmers is closely linked to both goals, agricultural modernization particularly targets income improvement.
Dang Guoying told NewsChina that “county” is another key word highlighted in the document, but it was largely ignored. The document states that to “build the whole agricultural industry chain and retain the main body of the industrial chain within the county seat,” the whole county should be regarded as an important entry point for the integration and development of urban and rural areas, the county economy should be enhanced, and the comprehensive service capacity of the county seat should be strengthened. To promote the county seat as an important carrier of urbanization, construction of the county seat should be in accordance with the standards of small cities.
Dang said that as the agricultural industrial chain is very long, if the chain is concentrated in big cities, farmers will have difficulty finding local employment. He suggested that most of the agricultural industry chain should be placed at the county level, and the role of the county should be strengthened. In the future, the State should guide industrial departments suitable for county development to invest in them and expand public sector investment in counties.
Zhang Qi, president of the China Poverty Alleviation Research Institute of Beijing Normal University, agrees. He told NewsChina that while poverty alleviation targets the problems faced by villages and individual households, future efforts will focus on the county as a basic unit for development.
Lei told the reporter that rural revitalization faces challenges in terms of competent people and capital resources. Village decay is a major problem in rural China, and cities have sucked in people, money and resources, resulting in significant disparities between rural and urban areas. For rural revitalization, how to gather resources, and in particular attract human resources, is critical.
Another issue is where the money comes from. Poverty relief is like a sprint that can be overcome by the injection of financial resources. Rural revitalization will take nearly 30 years, thus it is necessary to form a regular mechanism, he said.
Lei believes the central government should adjust its previous leading role in overcoming poverty to a position of guiding and mobilizing more social funds and actors to participate in rural revitalization.
“The key issue for rural revitalization is people, and it should be based on local solutions to promote human resources. So they should urgently encourage local leading figures to create better career platforms,” Lei said.