The 2025 Central Rural Work Conference, held in Beijing on 30–31 December, set China’s agricultural and rural policy priorities for 2026 and marked the strategic starting point of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. The meeting confirmed that agricultural modernization and comprehensive rural revitalization will be core pillars of China’s overall modernization drive in the coming years.
The conference framed 2026 as a transition year, moving toward institutionalized, long-term systems for food security, poverty prevention, and rural development. Rather than announcing radical new reforms, it emphasized policy continuity, implementation, and risk prevention, to be codified in the upcoming 2026 No. 1 Central Document. Four priorities stood out:
First, food security remains the top political task, with a shift from short-term output targets toward building resilient, sustainable production capacity—through farmland protection, high-standard farmland construction, climate-risk management, and more stable income guarantees for grain producers. Policy will focus on on stabilizing grain and oil production, sustaining efforts to increase grain production by an additional 50 million tons.
Second, poverty alleviation policy enters a new phase, transitioning from time-limited support to permanent mechanisms integrated into rural revitalization, with continued focus on less-developed regions and the 832 formerly designated poverty counties.
Third, rural revitalization will focus more strongly on livability and quality of life—sanitation, infrastructure, and local cultural vitality—while explicitly cautioning against uniform, urban-style rural development. The conference also emphasized drawing on the “Thousand Villages Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Renovation” experience – a pilot-based approach to rural revitalization from Zhejiang province that has now become a model for rural development on the national scale.
Fourth, the meeting reaffirmed deepening rural reform as a key enabler, notably through extending rural land contracts for another 30 years on a province-wide basis to stabilize expectations and encourage long-term investment.
Sources
Xinhua. (2025, December 30). China holds central rural work conference. China Daily. https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202512/30/WS69534741a310d6866eb31317.html
Xinhua. (2025, December 31). 以加快农业农村现代化更好推进中国式现代化建设——从中央农村工作会议看2026年“三农”工作战略部署. http://www.news.cn/politics/20251231/4f014cf4a09e4661bf0e78f71cea7e25/c.html
