Two priority tasks highlight rural work challenges

The No 1 central document for the year that the central government released on Saturday focuses on rural development. It provides indicators of the priorities for the rural work. The document outlines six major undertakings for the year aimed at comprehensively promoting rural vitalization. They are ensuring national food security, forestalling any large-scale relapse into poverty, improving the development of rural industries, strengthening rural construction, enhancing rural governance, and strengthening the leadership of the Communist Party of China on rural work.

Although most of the six tasks have been stressed over the past few years, the first two carry a greater sense of urgency this year given the widely felt uncertainties and risks associated with the country’s external and internal development environment.

Apart from the grave impacts of extreme weather events and global warming on the country’s food security, China has to take into account the systemic influences of geopolitical tensions, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Middle East crisis. Not to mention the possible impacts of some countries’ weaponizing of normal trade in a bid to hinder China importing food from the world market.

China’s population accounts for 17.9 percent of that of the world, while the arable land in the country accounts for only 7 percent of the world’s total. Although it has generally realized self-reliance in basic foods after years of struggle, the balance is precariously delicate. The country has been the world’s largest food importer for years in a bid to enhance the nation’s nutritional conditions.

That’s why, apart from diversifying its import sources for food, the country is obliged to further explore the potential of agricultural technology and scientific management to improve the efficiency of its food production. It needs to increase input to promote breakthroughs in agricultural science and technology, optimize the organization of rural production structures and strengthen oversights of farmland protection and reduce food waste.

Notably, after extreme poverty was eliminated in its vast countryside in 2020, avoiding a large-scale return to poverty has been singled out as a key task of rural work, second only to ensuring food security. That demonstrates the grave situation in that regard as a result of the downward pressure on the economy. Those that had been lifted out of poverty in the previous few years, particularly those living on incomes from temporary urban jobs, are also those most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the economy.

The number of jobs for migrant workers are in a decline due to both the overall macroeconomic conditions and the automation of manufacturing. So local governments should guide those looking for jobs to earn their living from their agricultural knowhow, the boom in digital economy, and the green transition of rural life. To that end, as the document stressed, more should be done to bridge the urban-rural gap in public services, improve the mechanism for diverse investment in rural vitalization and expand the rural talent pool. In the process, the farmers’ rights and interests must be strictly protected.