China shifts emphasis of rural work to vitalization
A scene during the harvest time in Liudaogou Village in Huanren Manzu Autonomous County in Benxi, Liaoning Province Photo: Lin Lin/PROVIDED TO CSST
As China has turned its focus in rural work to vitalization, we strive to build rural areas with thriving businesses, pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity.
Agricultural structural reform
Supply-side structural reform in the agricultural sector is one of the foci. This revolutionary reform is applied to the agricultural business system, as well as adjustments in variety following domestic and foreign market demands. First, two new types of agricultural business entities, farmer cooperatives, and family farms, will have a wider role to play. In March 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs tailored measures to bolster these two business entities in a development plan through 2022. Namely, laborers and university students willing to work in the countryside can promote innovation and entrepreneurship. They can open family farms through land transfers, enhancing the quality of overall agricultural development.
All places can establish family-farm management mechanisms by registering comprehensive information. Policymakers should endow the registered farms with favorable policies such as loans, insurance, land use, and electricity use while encouraging them to form partnerships. Also, governments should standardize and improve the quality of cooperatives which target sector demands. In this way, cooperatives can gain a bigger market say while incentivizing more farmers and boosting negotiation capabilities.
Quality and mechanization
High-quality agriculture requires quality improvement, brand building, and standardized production. It is also important to continuously strengthen productivity of labor, capital, agricultural land, and enhance their competitiveness in the global agricultural market. In this way, China will transform itself from a huge food producer to a country featuring advanced agricultural development. New agricultural formats will take shape and make progress, such as urban farming, citizens’ shares in farmers’ cooperatives, and direct supply of agricultural products. These formats can connect end-to-end production and consumption more closely, and reduce intermediate links, making production follow clearer targets. Also, modern information technologies such as the internet and big data allow producers to grasp consumption information and rearrange production structures promptly.
Agricultural mechanization strives for advancement. Holistically, farming methods in China feature both modernization and traditions. Take the planting sector as an example. On the Northeast Plain, farmers’ cooperatives and other business entities are using the most cutting-edge agricultural machinery in the world, while rural people in mountainous areas are still working with semi-mechanized farm equipment, and even use cattle to plow the fields. Therefore, the key to promoting the country’s agricultural mechanization lies in “weak areas” and weak links. “Weak areas” refers to mountainous and hilly regions with low levels of agricultural mechanization. Preferential policies should guide manufacturers to develop high-efficiency and high-quality small machinery. Weak links are showcased in the low level of mechanization of individual crop planting. To improve the situation, regions can support relevant technologies such as straw incorporation, conservation tillage, and efficient fertilization, pushing for mechanization breakthroughs.
Rural sector
Speeding up rural industry development comes first among the seven measures proposed at the Central Rural Work Conference. To this end, the basis of rural industry development is to maintain an area for grain cultivation and ensure food safety.
President Xi Jinping said that “Efforts should be made to ensure food security and strengthen food production year by year.” In 2020, China’s grain output hit nearly 670 billion kg, marking the sixth consecutive year that its total grain production exceeded 650 billion kg. This abundant harvest serves as the ballast for national economic development. Despite the widespread coronavirus pandemic, China has sufficient grain storage and there is no disruption to its food market. Ensuring grain security means that the country must retain a “red line” of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) of arable land.
Non-agricultural sectors demand vigorous efforts in the future. Non-agricultural sectors are multifaceted. One aspect refers to the extension of the agricultural supply chain while providing services for multiple agricultural production links, varying from agricultural product processing, storage, transportation, and ranging all the way to financial services and the supply of agricultural production materials. The other aspect relates to sectors that serve farmers’ livelihoods. Agriculture and rural people are inseparable from the development of rural sectors. Agriculture remains at the core of rural sectors, and farmers are the primary recipients of rural services. On the whole, the leading agricultural sectors at the county level have basically taken shape across China. Current agricultural modernization mainly focuses on extending the sector chain around these leading sectors, which is the foundation for developing rural sectors.
Construction and reform
Implementation of rural construction is paramount. The 14th Five-Year Plan and long-range objectives through 2035 first proposed rural construction actions that aimed to build towns into regional centers, with the goal of serving rural people. The action is rich in connotation, but it primarily aims to improve rural living environments. In Dec 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs stated that the three-year project improving rural living environments starting from 2018 had achieved most of its goals. Presently, the collection, transportation, and disposal system of rural domestic waste now covers more than 90% of administrative villages nationwide, and rural domestic sewage treatment has seen remarkable improvements.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025), several deep-seated problems deserve attention such as roads, housing, infrastructure, and public areas.
Rural construction action is a gigantic, systematic cause. Regions should pinpoint respective responsibilities. County Party committee secretaries should set a firm eye on work concerning agriculture, rural areas, and rural people while leading to improve the rural living environment. To support this task, regions should strengthen financial guarantee, promote financial institutional reforms in rural areas, and develop new financial products. Also, coordination and integration should expand at the county level. During the 14th FYP, we should thoroughly remove institutional barriers that hinder the free flow and equal exchange of urban and rural factors, encouraging a wide range of factors to flow to villages. In addition, rural governance is a major component of rural construction. Modernization of rural governance will advance through cultural construction and a mixture of law-based governance, self-governance, and moral-oriented governance.
The deepening of rural reforms should underscore the following aspects. First, to reform the property rights system, governments—based on asset and capital verification—should clarify the property rights of rural collectively-owned assets. A shareholding cooperative system should take effect where rural people can voluntarily turn their rights in collective operating assets into shares and acquire corresponding revenue. Meanwhile, enhanced operation and management of collectively-owned assets can increase rural people’s income from assets. Sector development requires effective resolution of the land-use problem. These measures will shore up the economic foundation of rural governance. Second, villages should advance the reform of rural residential land. As a result, they can vitalize farmers’ housing assets, raise farmers’ property income, and resettle rural people who don’t currently have sufficient residential land.
Third, villages should promote reforms of rural collective construction land for commercial use. Drawing on the experience of pilot regions can not only add land for urban construction, but also help tackle land-use problems in villages. Fourth, we should deepen the reform of agricultural subsidy systems. The reformative measures should target existing problems in the current subsidies concerning agricultural machinery purchases, agricultural support and protection, and agricultural insurance.
Finally, we should reinforce reforms of price formation mechanisms for major agricultural products. Presently, the state implements a minimum purchase price system for rice and wheat, and applies a producer subsidy system for corn and soybeans. The major problem lies in adapting the minimum purchase price system to comply with market rules and WTO rules, while also protecting growers’ interests, and pushing the producer subsidy system to be more precise and improve production efficiency. We should inform producers by applying modern devices such as big data and digital learning, and shield producers’ interests through tools such as insurance.
Kong Xiangzhi is a professor from the School of Agriculture and Rural Development and director of the Institute of Chinese Cooperatives at Renmin University of China.
Edited by MA YUHONG