APPLY THE CHINESE APPROACH TO REVITALIZE THE COUNTRYSIDE

APPLY THE CHINESE APPROACH TO REVITALIZE THE COUNTRYSIDE*

December 28, 2017

To revitalize the countryside, we must implement the guiding principles of the 19th CPC National Congress. We must follow the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and strengthen Party leadership over work related to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people. We must keep to the general guideline of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, adopt the new development philosophy, and pursue high-quality development. We must ensure a holistic approach to the Five-sphere Integrated Plan and coordinated implementation of the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy. We must ensure that addressing issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people is the central task on the work agenda of the Party. In accordance with the general requirements for rural development, we will turn the countryside into a place of thriving business, pleasant living environment, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperous households. To achieve our goal we must put in place sound systems, mechanisms and policies for promoting urban-rural integration and coordinating progress in the rural economy, politics, culture, society, and the eco-environment, and strengthen the Party in rural areas. We must move faster to modernize the rural governance system, increase governing capacity, and speed up agricultural and rural modernization. To revitalize the countryside the Chinese socialist way, we must make agriculture a promising industry, make farming an attractive occupation, and make rural areas a beautiful home where people live and work in peace and contentment.

When implementing the rural revitalization strategy, we must live up to farmers’ new expectations, and base our efforts on the realities of our country and its agriculture. Our goal is to upgrade agriculture across the board, and see that rural areas and farmers make all-round progress.

I. Reshape Urban-Rural Relations for Integration

We must be aware that urban and rural areas must reinforce each other in a symbiotic relationship, which is crucial to the drive for socialist modernization. Mao Zedong pointed out, “Attention must be given to both city and village and it is necessary to link closely urban and rural work, workers and peasants, industry and agriculture. Under no circumstances should the village be ignored and only the city given attention; such thinking is entirely wrong.” Deng Xiaoping also said, “No matter how successful our work is in the cities, it won’t mean much without a stable base in the countryside.” Urbanization is about the coordinated development of urban and rural areas; urbanization cannot come at the expense of agriculture and the countryside.

In recent years we have invested a lot of effort in coordinating urban-rural development, and made significant progress. Yet the mechanism for the flow of urban and rural factors is still flawed, the channels are not fully open in either direction, and unequal exchange of factors still exists. We must continue to ensure that industry helps agriculture and that cities support the countryside, so as to form a new type of relationship characterized by full integration and shared prosperity between industry and agriculture and between urban and rural areas, in which industry and agriculture promote each other and urban and rural areas complement each other.

We need professional people and resources to revitalize our countryside. If a one-way flow of rural human capital, land, and funds into cities continues, creating long-term shortages in the countryside, revitalization of the countryside will be nothing but empty rhetoric. We must focus our effort on attracting professionals from all trades to work in rural areas and contribute to rural revitalization. Most city dwellers have their roots in the countryside, and many are willing to pay something back to their hometowns given the chance. Encouraged in the right way and provided with the right channels, these people will play a major role in rejuvenating the countryside. We must test ways of doing this reinforced by institutional support.

We also must create opportunities and the right conditions to make the countryside and agriculture more attractive to many people, especially young people. We must cultivate a generation of professional farmers to improve the structures of the agricultural workforce and the rural population. We must stop the long-established practice of pumping the value-added income from rural land into cities, and help rural areas to use their land to good effect.

Industrial and commercial capital is instrumental for rural revitalization. Just as the countryside needs capital, capital is also motivated to enter the countryside where it can play a bigger role. This is the correct line of thought. On the one hand, we must improve the business environment, keep government policies stable, and guide industrial and commercial capital into rural areas while providing good service and protection. On the other hand, we must set up the “firewalls” necessary for preventing encroachment on rural land, ensure that farmers are not sidelined, and prevent the exploitation of loopholes in policy and administration and the use of deceptive trickery, so as to protect rural collective property rights and farmers’ interests.

In the current stage the most visible gap between urban and rural areas exists in infrastructure and public services. Prioritizing agricultural and rural development needs to be reflected in the allocation of public resources. We must focus on public infrastructure in rural areas, and build a network of infrastructure to be shared by both urban and rural areas. In upgrading rural infrastructure, we must work faster to build roads, farmland irrigation systems, and water conservancy facilities, and improve their management and maintenance. We must work faster to bring public services to the countryside, and continue to establish a universal basic public services network that integrates urban and rural areas and benefits both. We must prioritize education in rural areas, and move faster to establish a mechanism for developing compulsory education in an integrated and balanced fashion so that cities do their part to help the countryside catch up. We must ensure that each and every child in rural areas has equal access to quality education. We must coordinate the allocation of teachers in urban and rural areas, make the job of teaching in rural areas more attractive, and enable rural teachers to feel a sense of worth by steadily increasing their pay. We must make use of network information technology to develop distance education, so that quality education resources are shared between urban and rural areas.

We must improve primary-level healthcare services in rural areas, implement fitness-for-all programs, and promote wholesome lifestyles, so that rural residents lead healthier lives. We must improve the basic old-age pension schemes and the unified systems of basic medical insurance and serious illness insurance for rural and non-working urban residents, and the subsistence allowance system in rural areas. We must coordinate social assistance for urban and rural residents, and weave a strong security net to ensure basic living for the poor. We must improve the system for supporting and caring for children, women, and elderly people who remain in rural areas while other family members have left their homes to work in cities. We must identify the practical problems of most concern to farmers that affect their immediate interests, and fulfill our commitment to them by addressing these problems, so that they will have a greater sense of gain, fulfillment and security in the long run.

As urbanization rolls out in China, many farmers will ultimately migrate to cities. There is much to be done in this process. One urgent task is to allow people with rural household registration to settle in cities where they are eligible to do so, and cover all permanent residents with basic public services. We must employ institutional means to ensure that farmers enjoy peace of mind whether they choose to go to cities or stay in the countryside, and that cities and the countryside complement and support each other.

II. Consolidate and Improve the Basic Rural Operation System for Common Prosperity 

Certain rural operations form the institutional base for rural revitalization. We must uphold the collective ownership of rural land, consolidate the fundamental role of the household-based operation, and continue rural land contracting practices. We must improve the rural property rights system and the market-based allocation of rural factors of production, and encourage small agricultural households to become involved in modern agriculture.

As an ancient Chinese said, “Land is the root of the people.” The relationship between farmers and land remains at the core of deeper rural reform. The decision of the CPC Central Committee to extend existing rural land contracts for another 30 years when they expire is a key measure to safeguard long-term land contracting in rural areas. Hundreds of millions of farmers, keen to retain their land contracting right and to transfer the land use right, have now been assured of consistency in land contracting. 

With the 30-year extension in place, stable land contracting has been extended to 75 years, counting from the first round of rural land contracting at the beginning of reform in rural areas. This represents long-term policy consistency, and coincides with the timeframe of the targets set in the Second Centenary Goal. We must explain relevant policies and laws to the public and improve support measures. Relevant authorities must work out the details of implementing the extension policy. Separating the rights to own, contract and utilize farmland represents a major institutional and theoretical innovation. We must improve this arrangement and protect collective land rights and rural household contracting rights in accordance with the law, and on this basis protect farmers’ land operation rights without discrimination. The relationship between the three rights must be handled properly.

Although China is a big country, smallholder farmers’ production has been the prevailing practice for several thousand years. This is a national reality, and small household operations are the foundation of China’s agriculture. It is a fact that most Chinese farmers work on small patches of land, and this will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Developing appropriately scaled agricultural operations of various forms and cultivating new types of agribusiness entity will lead the way to modern agriculture. But we must be aware of the disparities in agricultural resources between regions. For example, in hilly and mountainous areas, farmland is split up into small patches on slopes. People have to do things according to available conditions. No wonder there are such verses: “Planting water chestnuts where the water is deep, paddy rice where the water is shallow, and lotus where the water is neither deep nor shallow.”

We must realize that large-scale production may not be feasible in some regions. We should also note that smallholder farmers’ production plays an irreplaceable role in carrying on our farming civilization, keeping agricultural production stable, keeping farmers employed, helping increase their incomes, and promoting social harmony in rural areas. We must balance developing new types of agribusiness against supporting smallholder farmers’ production. When determining the scale of agricultural production, we must be flexible and consider the actual local conditions. We should avoid applying a one-size-fits-all approach or coercive implementation. We must encourage players in new types of agribusiness to assume a driving role, and create professional and market-oriented service providers of all kinds. We must improve the organization of small-holder farmers’ production, upgrade their production facilities, increase their capacity to manage risks, and help them find more sources of income, so that they will embark with confidence on the track of modern agriculture.

Strengthening the rural collective economy is an important way to guide farmers towards common prosperity. We must work out more measures to provide better unified services, facilitate the use of collective resources and assets, and develop various forms of joint stock partnership. In the past, the ownership rights of some rural collective assets existed only in name, and the operational proceeds and their distribution were not transparent. Farmers were very concerned about this situation as in some cases it resulted in corruption. 

We must steadily reform the rural collective property rights system by conducting a full appraisal of the fixed assets and circulating funds of collective economic entities, confirming the identities of their members, and quantifying their stock shares. By turning resources into assets, funds into shares, and farmers into shareholders, we will establish a new operational mechanism for the collective economy in line with the market economy, to maintain and increase the value of assets, bring benefits to farmers, revitalize collective economic entities, and increase the ability of rural primary-level Party organizations to unite and deliver.

Here I would like to talk about famers’ residential plots. Many unoccupied rural houses are left to dilapidate, which is a big problem, but they could be valuable resources if used well. We must improve the policies concerning unused residential plots and unoccupied houses, and experiment with the separation of collective ownership, household entitlement, and the right to a residential plot. We must make sure that a residential plot is collectively owned, and protect household entitlement and farmers’ property right to their houses. Policy restrictions on the use of residential plots and farmers’ dwellings can be eased somewhat, especially in the process of developing rural tourism. But in no circumstances will urban residents be allowed to buy residential plots. Strict control of land use for planned purposes is a matter of principle that allows no leeway, and the construction of villas or private clubs on residential plots is strictly prohibited.

III. Deeper Supply-Side Structural Reform in Agriculture and High-Quality Development 

Right now China is at a critical juncture in transforming its agricultural growth model, improving its economic structure, and shifting growth drivers. Upholding supply-side structural reform in agriculture, we must pursue quality and green development, shift our focus from quantitative to qualitative growth, and develop industrial, production, and business operation systems for modern agriculture. By improving the all-round efficiency and competitiveness of agriculture, China will grow into a major agricultural power.

“The people are the foundation of the nation, and food is their lifeline.” Feeding more than one billion people has always been a major issue for us, as it directly concerns national stability. As I have reiterated on many occasions, we must have full control over our own food supply, and we must be able to feed the Chinese people with Chinese grain. With bumper harvests year after year, our granaries are filled with grain — but this in itself creates a financial burden and a pressure on imports. We must further reform the grain purchase and storage system. On the issue of food, we must be able to perceive what really matters. In a country like ours with a population of more than 1.3 billion, not having enough food is a problem; having too much food is likewise a problem. But they are problems of different nature. Excess grain puts pressure on our stockpiling capacity and finance, while a shortage creates overall societal strain. We must adopt a deeper and longer strategic view on the food issue.

The key to food security is grain production capacity. We must be able to ensure grain supply when needed. This requires us to guarantee that China’s arable land area does not fall below the red line, and we must cultivate higher quality farmland and improve irrigation facilities, modern seeding technology, and agricultural machinery. We must clearly define and properly manage grain production zones, and develop food crop production based on farmland management and application of technology.

Quality means efficiency; quality means competitiveness. In the past we focused on quantity in agricultural production, because there was a chronic shortage of food. The farmers sold whatever they could produce, and what could not be sold was purchased by the government. Now the situation has changed, and we cannot continue in this vein. When the NPC and CPPCC National Committees were in session last year, I said that our main problem in agriculture had shifted from insufficient production to structural issues, highlighted by both structural oversupply and insufficient supply. We now face a surplus of bulk agricultural products and serious overstocking, resulting in downward pressure on prices. We must act now to overhaul the structure of agricultural production and the distribution of productive forces, to make the shift from quantitative expansion to qualitative improvement as quickly as possible. This is our most urgent task in reforming agriculture from the supply side. Reform in the purchase and stockpiling of corn last year has reduced the inventories by nearly 100 million tonnes, demonstrating that only through reform can we solve our problems.

To spur agricultural development by raising quality standards, we must focus on promoting green and high-quality development, boost local specialties, and develop agricultural brands. In deciding what to grow or raise, farmers must follow market demand rather than government instruction. When we discuss grain security, it is actually food security that we are talking about. As the people have more diverse needs for food, it requires us to adopt a holistic view on agriculture and food, to explore food resources from all dimensions and sources — from farmlands, grasslands, forests, and the ocean to plants, animals and microorganisms — to get the energy and protein we need. We will cultivate specialty agriculture with local strengths and develop popular quality brands. 

To boost agricultural development by raising quality standards, we must be able to produce quality products and ensure they sell well. Many quality products are still being sold unprocessed and unadvertised from the fields and by the roadside, at much lower prices than their worth. Good products need advertising, too. We must learn to “groom” agro-products, promote them with good marketing, and strengthen grading, packaging, storage, logistics and marketing. Cold-chain logistics and other weaker links in particular must be addressed, and efforts must be made to modernize the circulation of agricultural products, so as to strengthen agriculture.

I have emphasized the issue of agro-product safety and food safety many times. This is a matter of principle. If we cannot meet this minimum requirement, if people cannot be sure of the safety of the food they eat, expressions such as quality agriculture and competitiveness will become empty talk. Responsibility for food safety rests with both producers and regulators, but fundamentally it is producers who make the food. So we must strengthen regulation at source, improve supervision, and ensure that all measures are implemented in full.

As times change, we must reevaluate the role of the countryside. Today’s countryside no longer serves the sole purpose of agriculture; it also serves to provide eco-environmental conservation areas and tourist destinations with unique cultural attractions. As an ancient Chinese poet wrote, “From distant villages barely visible, I see wisps of smoke rising softly; I hear dogs barking in deep alleys, and roosters crowing on mulberry trees.” More and more people are now choosing the countryside as the place to settle down, live a healthier life, enjoy retirement, or start businesses. As they long for the idyllic scenery of the countryside, and its poetic mountains and rivers, organic food, and folk culture and lifestyle, it has become a new trend to lead a harmonious and gently paced life in the countryside. It is generally believed that “So good is the view from a bamboo-fenced thatched hut that the grandeur of a mansion cannot compare.” When our countryside becomes a park, farmers’ houses become guest rooms, and farming becomes an interesting experience. When the beautiful environment, waters and mountains, and sound ecosystem of the countryside become rare resources, its economic, ecoenvironmental, social and cultural value will be better recognized. In response to the new demands of both urban and rural residents, leisure agriculture and rural tourism have boomed. The increasing integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas has opened new opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship for farmers to increase their incomes. We must cultivate new industries and new forms of business in the countryside, upgrade agro-product processing, and introduce information technology into all stages of agricultural production, processing and sale. We must develop leisure tourism, cultural activities, health conservation and elderly care facilities, and e-commerce, and encourage environment-friendly businesses to operate there, so that the rural economy will become more diverse. 

The primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas must be integrated, not mechanically chained together, and the key is to link benefits – it is not acceptable that business owners get the lion’s share of the profits while ordinary villagers are left behind. Villagers must benefit from the income of the whole industrial chain in the form of employment, minimum dividends, and shareholding.

IV. Pursue Harmony Between Humanity and Nature and Rural Green Development 

A sound eco-environment is the biggest strength and the most valuable asset of the countryside. We must observe red lines for ecological conservation, increase the value of the natural capital of the countryside, and make sure that rural revitalization is accelerated with the help of a healthy eco-environment.

In the childhood memories of our generation, the countryside meant swimming in rivers, catching fish from creeks, and rinsing vegetables by a pond. Only a few decades have passed, and we all know what it looks like now in rural places. To revitalize the countryside, one important task is to promote green growth models and ways of life, so that we have a healthy ecology and a beautiful environment, so that we have green mountains, clear waters, blue skies, lush fields, and beautiful villages, where people live in harmony.

However, there are still many instances of depleting natural resources and destroying the environment, such as reclaiming land from lakes and the sea, and breeding, fishing and grazing to excess. Farmers are still lavishing fertilizers and pesticides on their lands. Some water-deficient areas are still flooding their lands for irrigation, and crop stalks, manure, and plastic mulch are still not being used efficiently. This kind of growth, which exhausts all the resources without considering the needs of future generations, must not continue. As an ancient Chinese said, “Draining the pond for fish certainly gets you fish, but there will be none the next year; burning the woods for wild animals certainly gets you wild animals, but there will be none the next year.”

We must balance economic development and eco-environmental protection. We must make proper reductions in production capacity, turn reclaimed farmland into grassland and forest, and administer environmental regulation. A good eco-environment in the countryside will help farmers prosper economically. Sources of income will grow from the natural scenery, and businesses related to eco-agriculture, health conservation, elderly care, forest rehabilitation, and countryside tourism will flourish. A case in point is Anji County in Zhejiang Province, whose calling card is the beautiful countryside’s rural economy. It is as good as any European landscape.

Revitalizing the countryside through green development is a profound reform. The ancient Chinese knew it very well: “The skies cover everything, but the earth can only hold a limited amount.” We must improve policy support for eco-agriculture, form a green, low-carbon and circular agriculture, deploy a scientific, rational and orderly configuration of agriculture, and change the heavily resource-reliant model of agricultural development. We must intensify the prevention and control of agricultural pollution from non-point sources, reduce the amount of agricultural input, introduce clean production, turn waste into resources, and develop eco-friendly industrial models. 

We must strengthen the control of soil pollution and the restoration of polluted soil, expand trials in crop rotation and keeping land fallow, and protect the black soil in northeast China for strategic purpose. We must cover more areas in regulating the over-extraction of groundwater in north China, impose a total ban on fishing for aquatic organisms in reserves in the Yangtze River basin, strengthen pollution control of inshore aquaculture on beaches and shoals, and phase out category-specific marginal capacity in farming and industry where environmental and resource carrying capacity has been exceeded. We must continue with projects to protect and restore key ecosystems, and turn more reclaimed farmland into forest and grassland and more grazing land into grassland. We must protect natural forests, regenerate croplands, grasslands, forests, rivers and lakes, and coordinate the governance of mountains, waters, forests, farmlands and grasslands. We must make new breakthroughs in setting up diverse market-based mechanisms for eco-environmental compensation, so that those who protect the environment will not suffer losses but gain benefits, and let farmers become the guardians of our green space.

Farmers yearn for a good living environment; this is why we must make the countryside clean, orderly and sanitary. The three-year action plan for improving the rural living environment must be implemented thoroughly, with clear goals and division of responsibilities. The focus needs to be on household waste treatment, sewage treatment, and improvements to the overall environment in villages, and progressive efforts will be made to improve the conditions of mountains, waters, forests, farmlands, roads and housing. These must be part of the results in revitalizing rural areas. Toilets are no small matter; they directly affect farmers’ quality of life. We must address this problem as part of the rural revitalization strategy, and achieve tangible results along the way. Villages in both developed and underdeveloped areas must improve their environment. There can be variable standards, but farmers must at least have a clean environment to live in.

V. Carry Forward and Upgrade the Farming Civilization and Invigorate Rural Culture

Fine rural culture can inspire and motivate farmers, strengthen cohesion, and nurture civic morality in rural society. To revitalize and refresh the countryside, efforts must be made in both the tangible and the intangible — material and cultural — to cultivate wholesome habits and customs and good family values.

We must promote and apply the core socialist values, and work on education, actions and institutions. We must extend education to build public awareness of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the Chinese Dream, in ways that are popular with farmers. We must foster a Chinese ethos and a readiness to respond to the call of our times, and strengthen education on patriotism, collectivism and socialism. We must enrich our farmers’ intellectual and cultural life. We will strengthen education on atheism and help them to turn their backs on superstitious activities. We must take more cultural programs to rural areas, and encourage writers and artists to go to the countryside, get to know farmers, and create inspirational works of literature and art with a strong rural flavor that are popular with farmers. We must integrate cultural resources in rural areas, and organize public cultural activities that farmers like to attend. We must cultivate a cultural workforce in the countryside, organize paired cultural assistance between urban and rural areas, and introduce policies to encourage entrepreneurs, cultural workers, popular science writers, retirees, and volunteers to engage, as a new force, in developing cultural programs in rural areas.

The Chinese civilization is rooted in farming. We have the 24 Solar Terms for guiding agricultural activities, and ecological ethics that uphold the great virtue of nature and value the unity between humanity and nature. We have villages with unique local features, and amazing agricultural landscapes. We have festivals and celebrations of rural heritage, and colorful and diverse folk arts. We have long-cherished family traditions of farming and education, with loving parents and filial children, and rural communities where neighbors care for and help each other, and value good faith and propriety. All these elements combine to form a distinctive Chinese culture, carrying the genes of our time-honored civilization and adding luster to our thoughts, wisdom, and cultural pursuits.

We must dig deep into our fine rural culture, carry forward its essence, and be innovative with cultural traditions.

We must preserve what is tangible in our rural culture, tap into intangible cultural heritage with national, regional or rural characteristics, and work harder to protect ancient towns, villages, architecture, ethnic villages, cultural relics, and ruins of agricultural sites. 

We must pass down the live culture of the countryside, and rediscover the value of intangible cultural heritage such as folk arts, opera, ballads, storytelling, handicrafts, ethnic costumes, and folk cultural activities. We must integrate preservation and inheritance with development and utilization, and heritage of the farming civilization with modern civilization, and make the farming civilization more pertinent to our times. We will inject new life into the fine traditions of Chinese culture, so that the charms of our time-honored farming civilization will be manifest in this new era.

At the moment, however, unhealthy trends are prevalent in some rural places. Demands for betrothal gifts from the bride’s family extend far beyond the financial means of the bridegroom’s family, while the custom of giving and receiving pecuniary gifts for all kinds of social events imposes an unbearable financial burden on many people. In some places, finding a bride for a son of marriageable age can drive a family into poverty. Close human relationships in rural areas are something we treasure, but people should not be swamped with debt because of them. We must draw a line between age-old customs and outdated conventions and practices, and tell the public what to encourage and what to oppose. We must take a clear stance against excessive betrothal gift demands, against waste and extravagance at weddings and funerals, and against the practice and spread of superstition. These are important tasks in promoting cultural and ethical progress in rural areas. We must phase out outdated customs and cultivate healthy practices in the countryside. Wedding and funeral councils and village rules must play their part in restraining farmers from vying with each other in flaunting their wealth and livingextravagant lives, and help form healthy trends underpinned by diligence and economy.

VI. Improve the Rural Governance System

Rural revitalization cannot be achieved without a harmonious and stable society. We must strengthen rural governance with innovative ideas, and improve the modern rural governance system led by Party committees and executed by governments, with the support of all sectors of society and the participation of the general public. Rural governance must integrate self-governance, the rule of law, and the rule of virtue, so that rural society is dynamic, harmonious and orderly.

To hold up a jacket we grasp the collar; to lead a cow we pull it by its nose. To address rural issues we need capable leaders and strong grassroots Party organizations. We must focus on improving our Party organizations in the countryside, which is the key to communicating the Party’s propositions, carrying out its decisions, overseeing primary-level governance, uniting with and mobilizing the people, and promoting reform and development. We must strengthen the training of the heads and members of grassroots Party organizations, and address the problem that some grassroots Party organizations are weak, slack, ineffective or marginalized. We must handle unqualified Party members in a prudent and orderly way, and encourage Party members in rural areas to play an exemplary role. We have dispatched first secretaries to Party organizations in poverty-stricken villages, villages with weak and lax Party organizations, and villages whose collective economy is performing poorly. This is an important measure to revitalize the countryside and train officials, and we should make it a long-term mechanism that will exercise its intended functions.

To ensure impartial and clean government in the countryside we must strengthen the supervision and management of officials working at the rural grassroots, and punish corruption that encroaches on rural residents’ interests. The problems that concern farmers the most must be the focus of discipline inspection and supervision. We must continue to address pressing problems concerning the funds of programs benefitting agriculture and rural people, collective assets management, and land expropriation, and work tirelessly to improve Party conduct and enforce Party discipline. We must carry out special campaigns to address corruption and misconduct in poverty alleviation, and take resolute action against criminal gangs who tyrannize and bully villagers, and against officials and Party members who protect these gangs, so as to cleanse the political environment in rural areas.

Improving a rural governance system which combines self-governance, the rule of law, and the rule of virtue is an effective way to ensure good governance in the countryside. We must ensure overall Party leadership, be innovative in the effective implementation of rural self-governance, and shift the focus of social governance and services to the grassroots. We must develop more forms of primary-level democratic consultation, and let villagers play a supervisory role. Farmers must take the lead in discussing, deliberating, and deciding on village affairs. The rule of law is a prerequisite and guarantee of rural governance. All government work related to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people must proceed in accordance with the rule of law. We should strengthen communication and education on the rule of law in the rural areas, and improve legal services there. We will guide officials and villagers to study the law, respect the law, abide by the law, and apply the law, and to air their demands, solve disputes, and safeguard their rights and interests through legal means.

A nation cannot prosper, nor will a person succeed, without virtue. One significant difference between rural and urban societies is that most people in the countryside were born there and will die there, and they usually live in close and small circles of friends and acquaintances. To promote a sound morality in rural areas, we must dig deep into the ethical codes of the rural society of close circles, adapt them to the requirements of the times, and strengthen the educational function of morality, so as to inspire rural people, make them proud of the Party and the country, and encourage them to pursue excellence and goodness, care for their parents and family, uphold honesty and integrity, and be industrious and thrifty in running their households.

We must break new ground in improving systems and mechanisms for primary-level management. We will integrate and improve the public services and approval functions of county and township governments, and build one-stop service platforms to benefit the people. Some villages have opened sites online that provide more efficient public services. Local users can visit these sites which will help them go through each step of the procedure online. This convenience of service has proved to be popular, as it saves people a lot of time and energy. We must move faster to improve the accessibility of rural public services. We will expand our efforts to make the countryside a safer place by improving law and order, and striking hard against illegal and criminal activities that threaten rural stability, sabotage agricultural production, and infringe upon farmers’ interests. We will take particularly resolute action against criminal gangs in rural areas. 

As accidents involving abandoned wells, rivers, ponds, bridges, private housing, passenger buses, and school buses are not infrequent, we must conduct inspections to address this problem so that the people will have a greater sense of security.

VII. The Chinese Approach to Targeted Poverty Elimination 

As I stated in the report to the 19th CPC National Congress, targeted poverty elimination is the most decisive of the three critical battles for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. We now have only three more years if we want to achieve our goal. Whether we can make it depends largely on the battle against poverty. Overall prosperity will never happen unless all the rural poor have risen out of poverty. No leeway is allowed. There will be no turning back on our promise to the people.

We still face daunting tasks in targeted poverty elimination. We must have the right approach and a correct understanding of what we can achieve in office, help the impoverished to increase confidence in their own ability to lift themselves out of poverty, and see that they can access the education they need to acquire skills. We must ensure the results of our poverty elimination effort, motivate the poor, and increase their capacity for self-development.

In the next three years we must help 30 million people out of poverty, but the composition of this population has changed — more than 10 million of them are individuals with disabilities and those who are 65 years old or over. This requires us to take targeted measures. 

We must seek more support from industries that can provide employment opportunities, so that people with the ability to work can shake off poverty. This is fundamental to making our poverty elimination campaign sustainable. We must provide the poor population with training in the basic skills needed for finding employment or starting a business, and motivate them to rise out of poverty through their own efforts. We must stop simply handing out money and goods such as cattle and sheep. Instead, we must give production bonuses, employment subsidies, or provide jobs instead of giving grants to those in need. We cannot take on everything or play their part for them. Our job is to get the poor to understand that they can get out of poverty through their own hard work. 

We must relocate the impoverished population from inhospitable areas to places with better economic prospects, and make sure that they settle in their new homes, acclimatize to their new environment, and have the means to better themselves. 

We must focus targeted assistance on the poorest population, speed up the formation of a security network to ensure their wellbeing, and guarantee the basic living expenses of special groups of poor people such as the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled, assuring guaranteed poverty alleviation.

We must shore up the weaker links in infrastructure and public services in poor areas, improve the conditions of schools delivering compulsory education in these areas, and strengthen healthcare services for women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and other key groups there. We must prevent and control chronic diseases, and strengthen infrastructure such as roads, drinking water, power grids, logistics, and the internet, to ensure that the major indicators of basic public services in these poor areas are close to the national average.

There are 3.8 million severely impoverished people. Their absolute numbers are not great, but it is very hard to help them out of poverty, so we must invest more effort. We will formulate a guiding document on targeted poverty elimination for the next three years, focus on severely impoverished areas and groups with special difficulties, coordinate more resources, direct more favorable policies towards those concerned, and take targeted measures to win this critical battle against extreme poverty.

Organization and leadership guarantee success in the fight against poverty. After more than two years of strenuous effort, fatigue and weariness are apparent in some localities and departments and among some officials, and there are those who want to ease off, de-stress, and take a breather. The last leg of a journey marks only the halfway point. The fight against poverty is like a war, and we must press on with no letup. We must advance the campaign in one last push and without calling a halt – we will waste all our previous efforts if we leave it unfinished. We must strengthen the working mechanism whereby the central leadership makes overall plans, provincial authorities take overall responsibility, and city and county authorities take charge of implementation. We must ensure that top leaders of the Party and the government at every level take responsibility for the work of poverty elimination under their jurisdiction, and highlight the key role of county-level Party committees as the headquarters of poverty elimination work of the whole county. Party and government departments at all levels must reinforce the human resources for poverty elimination and select and appoint competent people to be officials. Here I reiterate that during the critical phase of the final battle against poverty in impoverished counties, the Party and government chiefs of these counties should remain steadfast in their posts. Those who have demonstrated outstanding abilities in poverty elimination will be promoted. I hope the officials concerned will fulfill the mission entrusted to them by the Party. Dispatched poverty elimination officials should have a stronger sense of responsibility and root themselves in their villages to work with the people until concrete results are achieved. Resident officials should not leave their villages until the people have shaken off poverty. We must look after officials working on the front line of poverty relief, protect them, and sustain their enthusiasm.

Poverty elimination requires solid work; there is no room for form over substance, red tape, or lip service. Our efforts cannot be diverted into meetings, documents, telephone calls, forms, numbers, or appraisals, and we cannot tolerate those falsifying data or practicing fraud. I have recently commented on a Central Commission for Discipline Inspection report on Hebei Province that special programs should be rolled out next year to investigate corruption and misconduct in poverty elimination. We must eliminate form over substance and lift the burdens on our grassroots units, so that they can focus on helping the poor. We should reinforce financial support, increase inputs, strengthen the management of funds, and improve allocation and efficiency, to ensure every penny is spent where it is needed most. Any act of embezzlement and corruption must be sanctioned and those accountable will be subject to severe punishment.

One more issue I want to emphasize is that we must be practical and realistic in poverty elimination rather than impose targets at every level and set unrealistic goals. Our goals are: to free impoverished people from the worries over food and clothing — which is not a big problem at present; to ensure compulsory education, basic medical services and safe housing for the impoverished; and to get rid of overall regional poverty. All this means eliminating absolute poverty in the traditional sense. The guarantee of compulsory education ensures that children from impoverished households all receive nine-year compulsory education; it does not cover preschool, senior high school, and university education. The guarantee of basic medical care means making the treatment of common and frequently occurring diseases affordable for impoverished people, and ensuring that they have access to basic needs even in the case of serious illnesses; it does not mean the government covering all the cost of any treatment. The guarantee of safe housing means moving impoverished people out of dilapidated houses or thatched huts; it does not mean providing them with extravagant homes. We will not allow those who have escaped poverty to fall back again because of medical bills or education costs, which means we will not allow them to fall back into absolute poverty and find themselves worrying about food and clothing again.

It should be noted that the poverty line we adopt in China meets the basic requirement for a moderately prosperous society, and it is also a relatively high line by international standards. Poverty elimination against the current target line will be a marvelous achievement and one that is not easy to attain. We must not overstrain ourselves in trying to do things beyond our capacity at this stage of our development; otherwise, the poor will fall into a welfare trap, creating a cliff effect. So arbitrary raising of poverty thresholds is not only impractical, but will have adverse consequences.

* Part of the speech at the Central Conference on Rural Work.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)