New Rural Revitalization Plan Announced

China's State Council held a press conference on September 29, detailing the newly-passed Five-year Program on Rural Revitalization (2018-2022) which was initiated and drafted in early 2018.

The program is predicated on the fact that the development of Chinese villages and agriculture continues to lag far behind China's general modernization, plagued by a fractured supply of agricultural products, deep poverty in some regions, worsening pollution, low production efficiency, a shortage of talent, a broken social welfare system, and more. It focuses on the preferential development of villages and agriculture to quicken modernization.

Over the next five years, the Chinese government will concentrate on better balancing urbanization and rural development by improving the rural living environment, upgrading agriculture, training next-generation professional farmers, increasing financial assistance to rural industries, setting up an all-around guarantee and social insurance system for rural people and enterprises, and more.

All these tasks, according to the press conference, are supposed to be achieved in three phases, each of which will be accompanied by specific targets. This marks the first time China has established an appraisal index system for rural revitalization.