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Nation pledges to speed up rural reform
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-10-19 09:59
A five-year blueprint mapped out by the Communist Party of China (CPC)
stresses the need to accelerate rural reform in a bid to narrow the yawning gap
between the urban and rural areas and promote social harmony.
The Proposal for Formulating the 11th Five-Year Program (2006-10) for
National Economic and Social Development of the CPC Central Committee, released
Tuesday, calls for stronger investment and financial support for agriculture and
rural areas and more satisfactory government services for farmers.
The proposal also underscores the importance of modernizing agriculture by
upgrading science and technology, improving agricultural infrastructure,
restructuring agricultural production, transforming the mode of agricultural
production, and increasing productivity.
In accelerating rural reform, the proposal suggests a variety of development
modes including the legitimate rotation of contracted land management rights
with compensation based on the principle of free choice, while improving the
system of unified management combined with independent management on the basis
of household contracting.
In the meantime, the CPC pledges to consolidate the achievements in rural
taxation reforms and further the institutional reform of the financial system in
rural areas.
The proposal also calls for the government to underscore the most strict
farmland protection, deepening the reform of farmland use regulations and
improving the mechanism for compensating farmers whose land is expropriated for
non-agricultural purposes.
The document stresses the importance of public facilities in rural areas like
those for education, public health and basic medical services, and distance
education and broadcasting and television.
Investment should be increased in agricultural infrastructure, such as road
construction, telecommunications, rural electricity networks, and the supply of
safe drinking water in rural areas.
The proposal also stresses the importance of sparing no effort to increase
the income of farmers, calling for measures to create more opportunities for
farmers to increase income, continue to improve the existing agricultural
subsidy policy and maintain the price of agricultural produce at a reasonable
level, so as to establish an agriculture support and protection system that fits
China's real conditions.
In poverty reduction, the CPC suggests relocation of the poverty-hit people
in regions with terrible living conditions and the establishment of a relief
fund for the poor unable to labor.
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