Local farmers at Liucheng City in South China’s Guangxi Province are marketing the Chinese honey oranges grown in their farms through the Internet.

China’s rural areas are steadily progressing toward the level of “moderate prosperity” with each passing year, and the proportion of areas that have crossed this threshold increased from about 76 percent in 2010 to 86 percent in 2014, according to a recently released report.

Compiled by the Rural Development Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Report on China’s Rural Development 2016 was released on Aug. 3.

The progress of rural areas toward this benchmark is measured based on the rural development index in China, which includes 27 sub-indexes divided into five dimensions: economic and social development, living standard, ecology and urban-rural integration.

The report suggested clear signs of progress with regard to the development of different regions in rural China. But disparities are more obvious in terms of ecology as well as economic and social development. And the unbalanced development among the five dimensions was seen especially in rural areas in the northeastern and western parts of China, according to the report.

The report also pointed out a number of obstacles blocking the path to comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society. One is finding ways to continuously increase the incomes of those who live in the countryside. Another is to improve the level of public services and address the serious deterioration of the ecological environment. At the same time, it is urgent to improve political democracy at the grassroots level and tackle the difficult task of poverty alleviation for the rural population as a whole.