Building Up China’s Strength in Agriculture and Advancing Work Concerning Agriculture, Rural Areas, and Farmers

At its 20th National Congress held in October 2022, the Communist Party of China (CPC) presented an ambitious blueprint for building China into a modern socialist country and proposed for the first time to move faster in building up China’s strength in agriculture. At the Central Rural Work Conference at the end of 2022, President Xi Jinping expounded on a series of major theoretical and practical issues from the strategic perspective of building a great modern socialist country. These included building up China’s strength in agriculture, accelerating the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, and advancing rural revitalization. This has provided the fundamental basis and guidance for carrying out work concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers on the new journey in the new era.

I. The significance behind accelerating efforts to build up China’s agricultural strength

A strong agricultural sector is the foundation of a great modern socialist country. However, the most challenging and arduous tasks we face in building such a country remain in rural areas. Agriculture not only provides fundamental support for modernization but also affects the quality of modernization. To achieve integrated progress in promoting new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization, it is vital that we accelerate the development of agriculture, which currently lags behind.

Making greater efforts to build up agricultural strength is important for the following reasons.

It is essential for meeting people’s aspirations for a better life

In promoting modernization, the first priority is still meeting people’s needs for food and clothing. These needs are now posing higher demands in terms of the quantity, quality, and diversity of agricultural products. As people’s living standards have improved, agriculture has not only guaranteed our food supply but also fulfilled other important functions, such as ecological conservation, leisure tourism, and cultural heritage. And as modernization has progressed, these functions have become increasingly important, with the unique value and charm of Chinese agricultural civilization coming to the fore, and more and more city dwellers seeking to experience rural scenery and reconnect with their rural roots. It is important to recognize that regardless of China’s level of urbanization, hundreds of millions of people will continue to reside in rural areas and engage in agricultural work. These people cannot and must not be left behind in the modernization process. To promote common prosperity and meet people’s aspirations for a better life, we must increase China’s agricultural strength at a faster pace, build a beautiful countryside, and enable rural residents to become more affluent. We must ensure that people in rural areas can lead better and more prosperous lives.

Winter wheat is growing well in Wangcun Town, Gansu Province, December 25, 2022. PEOPLE’S DAILY / PHOTO BY HUANG WEILIN

It will support high-quality development

Although agriculture’s contribution to GDP has dropped as modernization has progressed, secondary and tertiary industries which are closely associated with agriculture have expanded and grown stronger, and the fundamental and strategic importance of agriculture has become even more evident. In 2022, the value-added of the primary industry accounted for 7.3% of China’s GDP. In 2021, the value-added of agriculture and related industries reached 16.05% of GDP, according to calculations for the entire agricultural industry chain. Agriculture, rural areas, and farmers concern multiple sectors and fields and a large section of the population. They offer important support for ensuring stable growth, employment, and prices and hold enormous potential for expanding domestic demand. To accelerate the creation of a new development dynamic and promote high-quality development, we urgently need to build up the strength of agriculture, promote smooth flows of production factors between urban and rural areas and in the economy as a whole, and activate potential investment demand and consumption drivers in the agricultural sector and countryside. This will help drive economic growth and create broader and more substantive strategic space for national development.

It constitutes a pressing national security need

History shows that great countries have always had strong agricultural sectors. As a populous agrarian country, China must ensure that no pronounced weaknesses emerge in its supply of major agricultural products, key and core agricultural technologies, and industrial and supply chains, if it is to achieve the goal of becoming a great modern nation. Agricultural strength is crucial for reinforcing the foundations of security for a great modern country. We must therefore ensure both development and security and leverage the strength of our agricultural sector to buttress the foundations of national strength. With agriculture, rural areas, and farmers as a solid cornerstone, we can truly achieve self-reliance in development and grasp the strategic initiative for maintaining stability, adapting to change, and opening up new horizons.

II. Sparing no effort in carrying out the key tasks for building up agricultural strength

Prioritizing rural revitalization, we must effectively carry out work concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers and promote the coordinated revitalization of rural industries, talent, culture, ecology, and organizations (hereinafter referred to as the “five spheres of rural revitalization”). We must ensure food security and guard against a large-scale relapse into poverty. We should steadily advance key tasks such as rural development, construction, and governance and strive to build a beautiful and harmonious countryside that is desirable to live and work in.

Reinforcing the foundations of food security on all fronts

In recent years, China has continuously recorded bumper harvests and maintained an ample food supply, with particularly notable achievements secured in 2022. Despite numerous difficulties, including Covid-19 outbreaks in many localities, rare autumn floods in northern China, extremely high temperatures and droughts in southern China, as well as drastic fluctuations in international grain markets and high prices for agricultural supplies, China set a new record for grain output last year, reaching 685 million metric tons. It also expanded the production of soybean and oilseed crops at a scale beyond expectations. All this has provided robust support for stabilizing expectations, prices, and the economy as a whole. Amid grave and complicated international developments, global agricultural trade is currently beset with increasing uncertainty and instability. Due to its large population base and ongoing consumption upgrading, China is still seeing inevitable growth in the demand for grain, which is creating added pressure for the task of ensuring food security. We need to adopt a combination of measures to strengthen the material underpinnings for our efforts to boost grain production through farmland management and the application of technology. We need to improve the mechanisms for ensuring farmers profit from growing grain and local governments shoulder the responsibility for grain production. This will help cement the foundations of food security from the perspectives of land, technology, profit, and responsibility. It will help ensure national grain output remains at over 650 million metric tons, maximize production, and deliver a continuous rise in the rate of China’s self-sufficiency for soybeans and oilseed crops.

We should focus on the two key points of seeds and arable land. In managing arable land, we will strictly maintain the acreage of land but also carefully regulate its use and improve its quality. We need to adopt measures with real teeth to keep the total area of farmland above the red line of 120 million hectares. We must adhere to the principle of using high-quality and fertile arable land for planting grain and keep the total grain acreage stable, while seeing that orchards and nursery stock are cultivated on hills and slopes where possible and relying more on protected agriculture and plant factories for vegetable horticulture. We should gradually transform all 103.067 million hectares of permanent basic farmland into high-standard land, with solid measures taken to develop every plot to the required standard. To ensure food security, we need to increasingly rely on technology and seeds. We should prioritize the development of key and core agricultural technologies and invigorate the seed industry. We should accelerate R&D and application of urgently needed agricultural machinery and boost the overall efficiency of the scientific and technological innovation system for agriculture. This will enable us to move faster in achieving a high level of self-reliance and strength in agricultural science and technology. We should devote greater energy to increasing yield per unit area, develop integrated variety-specific plans based on high-quality land, seeds, techniques, machinery, and production methods, and use technology to boost output and productivity.

Farmers must be motivated to grow grains, and local governments must be motivated to focus on grain production. We will improve the mechanism of income guarantee for grain growers by means of both policy support and operational efficiency. We will refine the integrated policies for pricing, subsidies, and insurance. This includes continuing to raise minimum purchase prices for wheat, maintaining the right level of minimum purchase prices and subsidies for rice, and increasing subsidies for soybean producers. We will also expand policy-based purchase and storage schemes, carry out market-based purchasing, and move faster to institute long-term support policies. With gradual steps, we will expand the scope of full-cost insurance and income insurance for the three major grain crops of rice, wheat, and corn, and improve the mechanism for providing agricultural supplies at stable prices. To achieve cost savings and boost quality and efficiency, we need to develop new approaches for grain production and management and extend industrial chains. We should see that both Party committees and governments assume responsibility for food security and local governments take concrete measures to promote agriculture and grain production. We must encourage concerted efforts to ensure food security among major grain-producing regions, major grain-consumption regions, and regions where grain production and sales are in equilibrium. We must improve the mechanism for subsidizing major grain-producing regions and take practical steps to see that such regions are adequately compensated by major grain-consumption regions.

Greater priority should be given to elevating overall agricultural production capacity. China has kept grain output at a high level of over 650 million metric tons for eight years running. We will now move quickly to launch a new drive to further boost output by 50 million metric tons and strive to reach new heights as soon as possible. Increasing grain output is not a matter of choice but a necessity that must be rapidly ensured, as any increase in grain production capacity will bring about a commensurate increase in food security. Furthermore, we must establish an all-encompassing approach to food. We should make more efforts to build a diversified food supply system and explore food sources through multiple channels, with coordinated production of grain, cash, and fodder crops, integration between farming, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries, and joint management of plants, animals, and microorganisms. To ensure food security, we need to both practice conservation and tap into new resources. We must work tirelessly to save food and reduce spoilage. Extensive initiatives will be launched to promote conservation and cut waste at all stages from policy-making to grain production through to consumption. Healthy diets will also be advocated.

Women of the Miao ethnic group embroider at a workshop in Yutang Village, Honglin Yi and Miao Township, Guizhou Province, January 6, 2023. In recent years, Honglin Township has harnessed its rich store of intangible cultural heritage, including embroidery and batik, to help eliminate poverty and promote rural revitalization. PEOPLE’S DAILY / PHOTO BY ZHOU XUNCHAO

Consolidating and expanding our achievements in poverty alleviation

In recent years, all regions have continued to improve their dynamic monitoring and assistance for preventing a relapse into poverty. They have promptly implemented various assistance policies and further consolidated achievements in poverty alleviation. More targeted and robust measures will be adopted to align these efforts with our rural revitalization endeavors. We must help those who have been lifted out of poverty to reach even higher standards of living.

We must take resolute measures to prevent any large-scale relapse into poverty. We will continue to ensure that all levels of government fulfill their responsibilities for consolidating and building on progress in poverty alleviation, guarding against any slackening in effort or deviation from the right course. We will enhance monitoring and assistance and leverage the role of early warning and response to prevent people from slipping back into poverty. We must ensure the implementation of follow-up policies to assist areas and groups that have been lifted from poverty. We will steadily work to bolster support for meeting people’s basic needs and keep consolidating efforts to ensure people lifted from poverty have access to compulsory education, basic medical services, safe housing, and drinking water. We will resolutely guard against a situation where a whole village or township falls back into poverty.

We will help areas and people who have just overcome impoverishment to bolster their own development momentum. The fundamental way to change their situation of underdevelopment is through further development. More solutions and efforts are therefore needed to improve development conditions and capabilities. Further increasing the incomes of previously impoverished people should be regarded as a fundamental measure, and accelerating the development of previously impoverished counties should be our top priority. Focusing on rural industries and employment, we will integrate various resources to address weaknesses and propel rural development. Through development, we will consolidate our achievements in poverty alleviation and continuously reduce the income gap and development disparity. Furthermore, we will look into specific institutional arrangements to be adopted after the transition period following poverty eradication and set up sound regular assistance mechanisms for low-income rural residents and underdeveloped areas.

Creating more channels for increasing rural incomes

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, rural incomes have been growing at a rapid pace, resulting in a drop in the urban-rural income ratio from 2.88 to 2.45. However, the income gap between urban and rural areas, regions, and groups remains significant. Moreover, momentum for rural income growth has slowed, and the outlook for future growth has become less optimistic. It is vital that we develop more avenues for rural residents to increase their incomes, with a focus on improving long-term mechanisms that will deliver sustained, rapid increases. With this, our rural residents will have more and more money in their pockets and enjoy an increasingly better life.

We should harness the potential of industries to increase incomes. The fundamental way to lift rural incomes is to develop rural industries. Of the five spheres of rural revitalization, industrial revitalization is the most important and should remain top of our agenda. The watchword in this regard should be “local specialty industries.” By relying on unique resources, we can tap into the multiple functions of agriculture and leverage the diverse value of rural areas to develop distinctive rural industries. We should identify development opportunities based on local conditions and give play to multiplier effects arising from integration between primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. We must focus on strengthening leading enterprises, shoring up weak industrial chains, developing new business models, and building brands to enhance the market competitiveness and risk resilience of rural industries.

For every lock, there is a different key. It should be up to market entities, such as farmers, farmers’ cooperatives, and enterprises, to independently make choices based on their specific situations. Decisions and objectives should not be made on impulse. We must focus on enhancing the ability of industries to drive overall development and adhere to the development orientation of increasing the prosperity of rural residents. Investments should be channeled toward key priorities. We must avoid schemes that run counter to our goals and resolutely guard against any use of arable land for purposes other than agriculture and grain production specifically. We should guide enterprises and farmers in establishing benefit-linking mechanisms, ensuring more of the links in industrial chains extend to rural areas. This will enable rural residents to enjoy more of the value-added benefits of industrial development.

The incomes of rural migrant workers should also be ensured. The primary way to steadily increase rural incomes is to promote non-agricultural employment for the surplus rural workforce. Wage income makes up 42% of rural incomes and contributes to the bulk of rural income growth. Therefore, it is necessary to improve policies for stabilizing payrolls and alleviating the difficulties of enterprises and to take steps to strengthen labor cooperation, cultivate labor service brands, and improve the professional skills of rural migrant workers. These measures will help ensure stable employment of rural migrant workers. Currently, more than three-quarters of rural migrant workers are employed in their home province, and over half in their home county. This underscores the significant changes that have occurred in the distances between the homes and job locations of rural migrant workers. We must adapt to this trend. With a county-wide approach, we should develop local industries that have clear comparative advantages, a strong ability to drive development, and large job-creation potential so as to support rural prosperity. County-level economies should be developed into major growth poles for rural incomes.

Building a beautiful and harmonious countryside that is desirable to live and work in

The evolution from building a beautiful countryside to building a beautiful and harmonious countryside represents a further enrichment and expansion of the dimensions and goals of rural development. This approach emphasizes both physical infrastructure and people-centered initiatives, outward appearance and inner strength of rural areas, and cultural-ethical and material advancement. It espouses harmony in interpersonal relations, in humanity’s interactions with nature, and in urban-rural development. It will help promote a comprehensive improvement in rural areas, both inside and out.

We need to steadily develop the necessary hardware for ensuring a modern standard of living in rural areas. Although rural living conditions have vastly improved, they still fall considerably short of rural residents’ aspirations for a better life. At its 20th National Congress, the CPC set “ensuring modern standards of living in rural areas” as one of China’s overall development objectives for 2035. To accomplish this goal, we will steadily and prudently carry out rural development initiatives and develop rural infrastructure and public services in a well-planned and coordinated way. We will develop modern protected agriculture and build storage and cold-chain logistics facilities for agricultural products. We will continue to improve rural water, electricity, road, gas, housing, and communications infrastructure and upgrade rural living environments. We will also make concerted efforts to ensure that public services are inclusive, meet essential needs, and guarantee basic living standards for people in difficulty, and prioritize projects that both create convenience and promote production. These efforts will allow rural residents to enjoy modern standards of living within their own communities. It is important to establish bottom-up and participatory implementation mechanisms for rural development. We must listen to the opinions of rural residents on what to develop and how and guide their participation throughout the process. We must not abolish or merge villages or expand communities if it goes against the wishes of local residents.

An ethos of kindness, harmony, and peace should also be fostered in rural areas. Rural development should focus not only on “hardware” such as infrastructure and public services but also on “software,” including civic ethos and virtues. Throughout history, Chinese people in rural areas have embraced the concept of harmony and recognized the importance of appropriate timing and suitability in agriculture, kindness to others and harmony in everyday life, and concordance between village housing and the surrounding landscape in various seasons. We should integrate the best elements of traditional Chinese culture with rural development, governance, and cultural-ethical advancement. Adhering to the concept of harmony throughout, we should strive to provide nourishment for people’s minds, cultivate moral virtue, and foster unity, ensuring a benevolent, stable, and peaceful atmosphere in our countryside.

Furthering rural reform

Reform is an important instrument for promoting rural revitalization. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, we have continued rural reform, tackling many tough issues and delivering institutional achievements of fundamental and far-reaching importance. The more we advance rural revitalization, the more we must rely on reform to generate momentum and vitality. We will continue to further rural reform with a focus on properly handling the relationship between rural residents and land. We will consolidate and improve the basic system of rural operations by strengthening the foundations of the collective ownership system, guaranteeing and realizing the rights of members of rural collective organizations, and bringing resources and production factors into play. We will press ahead with the separation of rights for collectively owned rural resources and improve the functionality of these rights to generate stronger momentum and vitality for agricultural and rural development.

The neatly arranged houses, connecting roads, and green and crimson landscape form a picturesque scene beneath the clouds in Chengnan Community, Yuexi County, Anhui Province, November 22, 2022. In recent years, Yuexi County has steadily upgraded transportation in mountainous areas and improved the environment and living conditions of local villages. PEOPLE’S DAILY / PHOTO BY WU JUNQI

Rural residents will be granted fuller property rights. We will deepen reform of the rural land system, taking concrete steps to determine rights, steadily granting more rights, and invigorating the use of rights in an orderly manner. This will ensure that rural residents derive a greater sense of fulfillment from the reform process. We will steadily expand the trials for extending rural land contracts on the expiration of second-round contracts. We will grant extensions for all contracts in principle, to ensure stable and smooth renewals for the vast majority of rural residents. We will accelerate the cultivation of new types of agribusiness and promote the provision of extensive commercial agricultural services, such as contract plowing, planting, cultivation, and harvesting, as well as land trusteeship, for small farmers. We will also develop moderately scaled agricultural operations suited to China’s conditions. We will prudently advance the pilot reform of the rural residential land system, ensuring no red lines are crossed while also refining standards and setting clear requirements. We will explore effective ways of achieving the separation of ownership rights, contract rights, and use rights for rural residential land. We will carry out more trials for market trading of rural collective land designated for commercial development and explore effective mechanisms to distribute revenue from the appreciation of land values. To consolidate and build on our achievements in the reform of the rural collective property rights system, we will establish management mechanisms that clearly define property rights and are based on sound governance structures, stable operational models, and reasonable profit distribution. Furthermore, we will explore new ways to diversify the development of the rural collective economy.

We must facilitate the flow of production factors between urban and rural areas. Our efforts to build a country strong in agriculture must not be focused on agriculture alone, but carried out in the larger context of jointly accelerating new industrialization, informatization, and urbanization. We must explore a new path of building up agricultural strength that sees industry driving agriculture and urban development supporting rural development. We need to improve the institutions and policy systems for promoting integrated urban-rural development, facilitate the flow of production factors between urban and rural areas, and prioritize rural areas in allocating resources and production factors. Taking counties as a key point of entry, we should promote integrated urban-rural development by gradually removing barriers between urban and rural areas within every county. Thus rural residents will be able to freely choose and transfer between agriculture and non-agricultural employment, and to move back and forth between urban and rural areas. Counties should be developed into important nodes for linking industry and agriculture and integrating urban and rural areas.

III. The requirements for building up agricultural strength

Given China’s unique national context and agricultural conditions, efforts to build up the country’s strength in agriculture must be aligned with the overall requirements for Chinese modernization. We must adhere to the general laws and common features that underlie the development of strong agriculture. We should leverage China’s distinctive features to resolve China’s problems, apply approaches that fit our needs, and blaze a path of our own based on China’s resource endowment of a large population with limited arable land, our rich heritage as an agricultural civilization, and the contemporary need to ensure harmony between humanity and nature. We will develop strong agriculture based on robust supply guarantees, advanced scientific and technological equipment, effective operational frameworks, resilient industries, and strong competitiveness.

Understanding the CPC Central Committee’s unified plans regarding work concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers

Building up agricultural strength was a decision made by the CPC Central Committee from an overall strategic perspective. This decision is consistent with the initiatives to promote rural revitalization and modernize agriculture and rural areas. Taken together, these initiatives provide a general framework and overarching requirements for the different stages and dimensions of work relating to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. While they are well-integrated, each has a specific emphasis. Consistent in their main objectives and key tasks, these three initiatives are incorporated into the entire process of work relating to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers on the new journey in the new era. Rural revitalization proceeds from the changes in the relationships between agriculture and industry and between rural and urban areas, and emphasizes the unique functions of rural areas and the direction of their transformation. The modernization of agriculture and rural areas primarily considers the intrinsic development momentum of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers and highlights the development of agriculture and rural areas in the overall modernization process. The building of strong agriculture proceeds from overall national strategy, emphasizing the need to consolidate the foundations for China’s strength and enhance its international competitiveness. In practice, the discourse, policy, and work systems for these three initiatives should be well-linked in order to maintain continuity in our work. They should not be fenced off from each other or pursued separately.

Carrying out overall planning and coordination

Building up agricultural strength is a long-term and formidable historic task. At the national level, we need to strengthen top-level design and work to formulate plans to accelerate progress in this regard. We should make overall, systematic arrangements in keeping with existing plans, set specific goals and tasks for the next five years, through the year 2035, and for the middle of this century, and work out clear roadmaps and action plans to ensure progress with solid and vigorous efforts. All regions must accurately define their own position within the drive to build up agricultural strength. They should serve the national strategy with a focus on their primary functions, give full play to their advantages, and make their due contribution. All this will produce an overall effect and synergy that allows all regions to play to their strengths, work to the best of their abilities, and achieve complementary development, with the success of one leading to the success of all. We should avoid imposing uniformity between different levels of government and eschew a cookie-cutter approach to building up agricultural strength at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels.

Tailoring measures to local conditions and focusing on practical results

Efforts to build up agricultural strength must be grounded in reality, deliver practical results, and target the most urgent problems in local agricultural development and the issues that concern farmers most. Under this guidance, we will carry out specific and practical initiatives to improve the people’s wellbeing and resolve small but critical issues. We must not impulsively launch grand schemes or grandiose initiatives, or build large parks and projects that have no basis in reality. We will secure success through persistent and steady progress and spark the enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity of farmers by genuinely enhancing their sense of fulfillment.

Giving full play to the decisive role of the market and better leveraging the role of the government

A key indicator of a strong agricultural sector is competitiveness. To build up agricultural strength, therefore, we must adopt a market-oriented approach, follow the laws of the market, and utilize market mechanisms to elevate the quality, performance, and competitiveness of our agriculture. At the same time, food is no ordinary commodity; agriculture is a basic industry that underpins food security and basic wellbeing. Even in developed countries, agricultural development and increases in farmers’ incomes are largely supported by high subsidies. This means that to develop agriculture and ensure food security, we must further leverage the role of an effective government to improve systems for supporting and protecting agriculture, further consolidate the foundations of agriculture, and provide a robust and reliable guarantee for the food security of over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

Strengthening the CPC’s overall leadership over work relating to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers

This provides a strong political guarantee for promoting rural revitalization and building up strength in agriculture. We must continue to adhere to the strategic orientation of making agriculture, rural areas, and farmers our top priority and give precedence to the development of agriculture and rural areas. We should continue to promote integrated urban-rural development and prioritize the development of strong agriculture within the larger context of building a great modern socialist country. We should give full play to the political advantages of the CPC’s leadership and pool the insight and energy of all stakeholders to achieve progress. We should fully implement the responsibility system for rural revitalization and give precedence to rural revitalization in work planning, funding, and the allocation of resources and production factors. In doing so, we will achieve constant progress in rural revitalization and get off to a good start in building a country strong in agriculture.

Tang Renjian is Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and Secretary of the Ministry’s CPC Leadership Group. He is also Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs.

(Originally appeared in Qiushi Journal, Chinese edition, No. 6, 2023)