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Farmers' income can be doubled by 2020

By Feng Haifa (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-04 11:00

At the third plenary session of its 17th Central Committee, which concluded on Oct 12, the Communist Party of China (CPC) approved a resolution on major issues concerning rural reform and development.

It was a new, significant move made by the ruling Party on rural development on the 30th anniversary of the Third Plenum of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978, which pioneered the country's historic reform and opening-up drive. The resolution, which is no doubt to serve as a guiding document for rural reform and development in the following years, draws an inspiring blueprint for the vast underdeveloped rural areas under the new situations at home and abroad.

In the document, the Party outlined a series of tasks and goals for rural development, ranging from economic, political, cultural, social and ecological construction to setting an ambitious development goal by 2020. The Party vowed to set up an integrated urban and rural economic development mechanism by that year, which will help maintain the country's grain safety and a sufficient supply of agricultural products. The per capita net income of the country's hundreds of millions of rural population would be doubled and absolute poverty would be eliminated in rural areas, the document says.

Also, the government will take viable measures to realize farmers' basic democratic and cultural rights and interests.The country will strengthen financial input in the countryside to ensure all rural residents' access to necessary education, medical care and sanitation facilities as well as guarantee a basic standard of living.

In addition, to provide rural residents with an ecological environment for living, a set of resources-conserving and environment-friendly agricultural production systems will take shape by that year, the document says.

Putting forward these aggressive but practical goals and tasks for rural development, the Party demonstrates a superb ability to grasp the pulse of the times and acute insight to look upon rural situations in the context of the country's overall development.

The document also marks a new dimension to the content on rural issues that the CPC included in the report to its 17th national congress held early this year. The report set the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects and a socialist new countryside by 2020.

That the per capita net income of farmers will double at this year's level by 2020 is really encouraging. That means, through 12 years of development, the average disposable income of farmers will amount to 10,000 yuan ($1,461.74) that year, not including the inflation-induced increment. The setting of the tangible goal for farmers' income growth is very important.

The country's ambitious goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects will go nowhere without the prosperity of farmers, who account for about a larger portion of the country's whole population. Statistics show that the income gap between urban and rural populations has widened although farmers have enjoyed a continuous income growth. The urban-rural income ratio expanded to 3.33:1 last year from 1.86:1 in 1985, or an absolute gap of 9,646 yuan to 342 yuan respectively.

Setting a measurable income goal for farmers, which fully demonstrates the high importance the Party has attached to improving farmers' income, is expected to greatly stimulate the initiative of the masses of farmers.

Provided that farmers' income can maintain an average growth rate of 5.95 percent, the ambitious goal will come true.

Since 2001, farmers have had a 6.2 percent income growth year on year, and even a higher 7.5 percent year-on-year since 2004. It is estimated that the per capita net income of farmers can grow by 6 per cent year on year or above in the following years.

However, we should also be adequately conscious of the existing difficulties in our efforts to maintain an average growth rate of 6 percent in the following 12 years. Given some uncertainties still existing in domestic and global economic situations, any inappropriate decisions concerning agricultural and rural development would drag down the growth of farmers' income.

Under such circumstances, we should unswervingly stick to promoting the growth of farmers' income as the central task in our agricultural and rural work by putting into effect various agriculture-preferential policies put in the Third Plenum of the 17th CPC Central Committee's resolution and strengthen the foundation for income growth.

The author is deputy director of the Bureau of Rural Affairs under the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee.