Boosting incomes a major task
Print Edition
CHINA will step up reforms and innovation to speed up agricultural modernization in 2015, according to a key policy document released yesterday.
As the Chinese economy, under the “new normal,” shifts from high-speed to medium to high-speed growth, it has become a key issue, the document said, to continue consolidating the position of agriculture as the foundation of the economy and to further increase farmers’ incomes.
The “No. 1 Central Document” is the first major policy document of the year issued by the Party’s Central Committee and the State Council and this year’s is the 12th consecutive one that has focused on agriculture and rural issues.
The document highlights the challenges that are facing China’s agricultural sector, including surging production costs, a shortage of agricultural resources, excessive exploitation and worsening pollution throughout the country.
According to the document, China will strive to transform the development of agriculture, boost policies that benefit farmers, push forward the building of a new socialist countryside, deepen rural reforms and strengthen the rule of law in dealing with rural issues.
This year’s document puts more emphasis on “strengthening reform and innovation,” compared to the one issued in 2014, Zhu Lizhi, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences told reporters.
Highlighting the role of agriculture, the document says that a strong agricultural sector is the prerequisite of a strong China.
Instead of mainly pursuing high output and relying on the consumption of resources, China should be putting equal emphasis on quantity, quality and benefits, and attach importance to competitiveness, technological innovation and sustainable growth, it says.
The document urges making the transition as quickly as possible.
The goal is to put agriculture on a development path featuring high efficiency, product safety, resource saving and environment friendliness, the document says.
It calls for deepening agricultural restructuring, raising the quality and safety levels of agricultural products, strengthening the role of science and technological innovation, and innovating the circulation patterns of farm produce.
China’s current way of cultivation has been over-exploiting the fertility of the
nation’s farmland, said Zhu.
Another major task ahead is to boost farmers’ incomes.
China will increase investment in the agriculture sector and the countryside, boost the effectiveness of subsidy policies, improve the pricing mechanism for produce and enhance supporting services, says the document.
“These measures will further activate rural resources and help farmers to increase their income,” said Dang Guoying, a senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Accelerating the building of a new socialist countryside would be done by the government boosting rural infrastructure, raising public service levels in rural areas, improving the rural environment, and encouraging more social capital investment in rural development.
The introduction of social capital will play an important role, said academy researcher Li Guoxiang.
To deepen rural reforms, more efforts will be made to establish a new-style agricultural management system, accelerate reforms of the rural collective property rights system, steadily push forward pilot reforms of the rural land system, carry out rural financial system reforms, and deepen water conservancy and forestry reforms, according to the document.
It urges guiding land management rights to flow in an orderly way and raising the scale of agricultural production.
Rural reforms will reinvigorate the countryside by awakening “sleeping” resources such as farmland and capital and making them flow in an orderly and reasonable manner, said Ye Xingqing, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council.
The document also calls for improving the agricultural and rural legal system to strengthen the rule of law in dealing with issues such as protection of rural property rights, regulation of the rural market and rural reforms.
The document, for the first time, noted the importance of the rule of law and it is the strengthened rule of law that will ensure rural reforms be carried out smoothly, said Zheng Fengtian, an agriculture professor at the Renmin University of China.
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