CPC presses on with balanced development in cities, countryside

Source: Xinhua | 12-19-2007 13:17

BEIJING, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- Agriculture and rural development led the agenda of a senior Party meeting here Tuesday which stressed the coming challenges to reach a balanced development between rural and urban areas.

President Hu Jintao presided over the meeting.

"The Party has always made the development of agriculture, farmers and rural areas a priority... but we must see that there are quite a few challenges," says a statement issued after the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC).

The foundation of agriculture remained weak and the gap between the urban and rural development kept growing, the statement says.

The meeting stressed that much work should be done to realize the balanced development between urban and rural areas, to transform the development pattern of agriculture, to improve productivity, to guarantee the supply of farm produce and keep farmers' incomes steadily growing.

The participants at the meeting agreed the government would invest more in agriculture and rural development projects and workout more policies to support and benefit agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

Public services in rural areas needed further improvement, the statement says.

Special efforts would be made to improve basic healthcare services in the countryside and include more villagers in the social insurance network.

The farmers' rights to use the farmland should be safeguarded and the interests of migrant workers in cities be protected, it says.

The Party and government would work to promote the self-governance system at the primary level of rural society so as to help rural residents enjoy more democracy, according to the statement.

At the meeting, a number of policies on agriculture were announced, including more investment in infrastructure and irrigation facilities in rural areas, better conservation of farmland, more new agricultural technologies and support for industrialized farming.

The CPC is going to hold its annual conference on rural work but the date is yet to be set.

China has picked up a series of policies to benefit rural areas and agriculture and increase the farmers' income, including more investment from the central budget and fewer taxes.

The government has cancelled four types of taxes saving farmers about 120 billion yuan (16.21 billion U.S. dollars) annually.

The central government has spent about 431.8 billion yuan (58.35 billion dollars) in agriculture and rural areas so far this year. Last year's figure was 339.7 billion yuan (45.9 billion dollars).

The growth of average annual net income of a rural resident has been higher than 6 percent for three years, 6.8 percent in 2004, 6.2 percent in 2005 and 7.4 percent in 2006, the first ever since 1985.

In the first three quarters this year, the average cash income of a rural resident stood at 3,321 yuan (448 U.S. dollars), up 14.8 percent over the same period last year.

Editor:Zhang Ning