On 17 May 2024, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), the National Rural Revitalization Administration, and other relevant agencies jointly released the “Digital Village Development Guideline 2.0”.
What are digital villages?
Digital villages are part of China’s rural rejuvenation plan to modernize the agricultural sector and narrow the rural-urban gap. They have been promoted as a new development model in which digital technologies are used to improve agricultural production via precision or smart farming while rural livelihoods are improved by creating new income opportunities from e-commerce, live streaming, or village tourism as well as providing social services through novel digital apps and data management tools.
What are the key points in the new guideline?
Since 2021, a “Digital Village Development Action Plan (2022-2025)” has been in place, outlining eight key actions such as upgrading digital infrastructure, promoting smart agriculture, and enhancing digital governance capabilities. To implement the plan, the “Digital Village Development Guideline 1.0” was published in July 2021, assisting local governments in the construction, operation, and management of digital villages.
The second edition provides some important revisions on how to manage public data platforms and handle agriculture-related data resources. The forthcoming “Digital Village Development Guideline 2.0” will focus on enhancing information infrastructure, digitizing agricultural value chains, making rural governance more data-driven, improving rural public services, fostering rural digital culture, and promoting smart and green villages, with the aim of better guiding the development of digital villages across the country.
Shorter than the guideline 1.0, the new edition has a scope of 40 pages and includes four chapters addressing different aspects of rural digitalization. These include:
- Overall framework
- Development
- Methods
- Safeguard measures
The major goals of digital village development include smart agriculture, digital village prosperity industries, digital village culture, digital village governance, digital village resident services, smart beautiful village, agricultural data resources and digital village infrastructure development, as shown in figure 1.
How does the new guideline compare to the earlier version?
Compared to the first edition, the “Digital Village Development Guideline 2.0” has made five key optimizations and improvements:
1. Incorporation of “public support platforms” into “agricultural data resources”: This change emphasizes the importance of data as a valuable production factor.
2. Separate chapter on “smart agriculture”: Originally part of the “rural digital economy”, smart agriculture now has its own chapter to better guide its development.
3. Integration and optimization of “development models” and “construction process management”: These sections are now combined into one, enhancing the guideline’s practicality.
4. Detailed safeguard measures: The guide now includes tasks at the municipal level and clarifies the division of responsibilities among provincial, municipal, and county levels.
5. Improvement of case studies: The new guideline incorporates recent innovative practices to make the case studies more useful and applicable. The guideline 2.0 also provides several new case studies, including:
- smart rice cultivation in Sanshan Economic Development Zone of Wuhu City, Anhui Province;
- “smart lifestyle” for cows in dairy farming in Litong District of Wuzhong City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region;
- digital finance and insurance scheme for farming and farmers in Beidahuang, Heilongjiang Province;
- “Internet + government services” in Shanhang county, Fujian province
Sources
1. Digital Village Development Guideline 2.0 (full document in Chinese)
2. Chinese government news (in Chinese)
3. MARA explainer (in Chinese)
4. DCZ study on digital villages in China (in English)
