China released No.1 Central Document 2020 on Agriculture and Rural Development
Prof. Liu Yonggong
10 February 2020
On January 5, China released its No.1 Central Document 2020 on agricultural and rural development. The document declared two key tasks to work on in 2020, i.e. eliminating rural absolute poverty and overcoming the various shortcomings in the work on “San Nong” (the three rural issues: agriculture, farmers and rural areas). The document reemphasized the importance of San Nong work in order to achieve the goal of constructing a well-being society in the upcoming decades.
For achieving the above mentioned two major objectives of 2020, the document highlighted 27 countermeasures categorized in five key work areas:
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Win the battle against absolute poverty. Eliminating absolute poverty by the end of 2020 is a periodical goal of the national poverty reduction strategy. The major tasks include: (i) entirely lift existing poor population out of absolute poverty; (ii) consolidate the results of poverty alleviation and prevent that people fall back into poverty; (iii) strengthen the work of measuring poverty reduction achievements and performance for recognizing counties with successful poverty alleviation; (iv) continue to effectively implement existing poverty alleviation policies and countermeasures; (v) prepare and formulate the post 2020 poverty reduction strategies and countermeasures.
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Overcome the shortcomings in rural public infrastructures and public services. Eight concrete countermeasures will be implemented: (i) improve rural public infrastructure such as roads, electricity supply, communication facilities, etc.; (ii) improve drinking water supply facilities; (iii) improve rural community hygiene and living as well as environmental infrastructures; (iv) improve rural education quality and facilities; (v) improve rural community health services; (vi) improve rural social security supply and coverage; (vii) improve rural community cultural services and relevant facilities; (viii) control rural ecological and environmental problems, i.e. enhance the treatment and reuse of livestock manures, reduce the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, control soil and water pollution, conserve arable farmland, etc.;
- Ensure the effective supply of major agricultural products and increase farmers' income. The document underlines five key countermeasures: (i) stabilizing grain production through ensuring minimum sowing areas, introducing high yield varieties, ensuring sowing areas of soybean, supporting key grain production counties and regions, high yield farmland construction, etc.; (ii) recovering the pig production and supply, to increase the stock number, strengthen epidemic control, support the large scale and standardized pig production, improve the pork processing facilities, etc.; (iii) strengthen the modern agricultural infrastructure construction, plan and implement large modern agricultural programs and projects, increase financial investments in modern agriculture, implement high yield farmland construction projects and modern agricultural production projects, construct a modern agricultural logistic chain, including processing, storage, transportation, marketing, etc.; (iv) the government will support the development of rural industries to increase farmer’s income, supporting the large scale producers, including large agricultural enterprises, large farms, farmer’s cooperatives, supporting the construction of modern agricultural production and processing parks and bases; (v) lastly, creating more job opportunities and stabilizing the income of rural migrant workers;
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Strengthen rural community governance. The document stresses four countermeasures: (i) strengthen the roles of governmental and party’s organizations in community governance and public services; (ii) improve rural community governance work system, including self-governance; (iii) harmonize and moderate the rural community conflicts and disputes; (iv) promote safe rural community construction for establishing a harmonized social environment;
- Safeguard countermeasures for addressing shortcomings in “San Nong”. Major countermeasures include: (i) increase the financial investment by central and local governments and set up rural financing service system; (ii) ensure the land resource supply for rural and agricultural development, i.e. setting up arable land red lines, incorporating land use for constructing processing, storage and marketing facilities into land management system; (iii) promote and encourage agricultural talents and entrepreneurs going to rural areas to invest and engage in modern agriculture; (iv) strengthen the development and adoption of agricultural sciences and technologies; (v) continue rural reform, land tenure reform, structural change, development of large scale enterprises, etc.
For a full version of Document No.1 in Chinese see: