China Publishes its First Report on Implementation Achievements of Rural Revitalization Strategy
Prof. Liu Yonggong
Advisor of Agribusiness Dialogue (DCZ)
8 June 2020
On 8 June 2020, China published the “Report on Implementation Achievements of Rural Revitalization Strategic Planning (2018-2019)”. The report is jointly prepared by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA), National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC) and other 25 relevant ministries. The report concludes that the implementation of the strategic planning in the past two years has achieved significant progress and laid a good foundation for the implementation in the forthcoming years.
The report states that the implementation of the strategic planning was launched smoothly. All 31 provinces have established governmental implementation leading groups and clearly designated the tasks and responsibilities to the party secretaries and governors to implement the program and achieve the planned targets. Provincial and local action plans for implementing the program have been prepared by governments at various levels. Governmental policies for promoting urban-rural integrated development were formulated by local governments. An effective implementation monitoring and reporting system has been well established.
The report highlighted following major achievements in the past two years:
- Constructed a new strategic framework for rural revitalization. The integrated rural-urban development structure and strategy are formulated and improved; the resource allocations and spatial functions for rural production, living and ecological conservation have been clearly defined; featured and categorized village development approaches have been introduced and implemented;
- Further consolidated the modern agriculture foundation. Implementation of the rural revitalization strategy has further increased production and supply capacity of grain and other important agricultural products; grain production in the past five years constantly reached above 650 million tons, contribution rate of modern science and technology to agricultural productivity has further increased to 59.2%, overall application rate of agricultural machines is more than 70%;
- Change of agricultural development modality. The annual use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is declining, reuse rate of crop straw and animal wastes increased to 85% and 74%. Recycling rate of on-farm plastic films in Northwest China is more than 80%. The valuation rate of agricultural product quality reached more than 97%.
- Accelerated rural industrialization. The strategy implementation facilitated the merging of primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural area, the percentage of processed agricultural products reached to 68%, farmer’s income from rural tourism increased significantly, rural e-commerce and other new rural industry formats were quickly developed.
- Improvement of rural living environment, livelihoods and infrastructures. All administrative villages with adequate conditions have built hardened concrete roads, all villages have access to medical and clinical services,average standard of low income living security for low income families increased to 5247 Yuan/year/person, continuously improved the living environment of rural people, 60% of the villages have access to sanitary toilet facilities, 90% of the villages launched and carried out rural sanitation campaign programs;
- Rural culture development. 98% of the villages formulated village rules and regulations, reformed the wedding and funeral customs; 549,000 village culture centers were conserved,while conserving traditional farming and rural cultures;
- Contributed to rural social harmony and stability. 44,700 ineffective and uncapable village organizations have been reformed and rectified, about 230,000 rural development agents were commissioned to villages to strengthen the village development capacity. Contracted land registration and certification amounts to about 94%,inventory of collective assets has been completed,more than 260,000 village collective economic entities completed the stock-share reform;
- Achievements in rural poverty reduction. Until the end of 2019, about 97% of rural poor have been lifted out of poverty, 94% poverty counties in China are already recognized to be out of poverty, poverty incident went down to 0.6%,rural per capita expendable income reached 16021 Yuan/person in 2019. The growth of per capita expendable income in poverty counties achieved 9.7%, 2.2% higher than the national average.