Keeping focus on rural matters vital for nation's rejuvenation: China Daily editorial

Poverty alleviation work and continued efforts to raise the incomes of rural residents are crucial for the country to realize its goal of becoming a better-off society in an all-around way by the end of this year. Therefore, it is of vital importance to further increase the income of rural villagers, to improve the governance of rural work and promote agricultural development in the 10 months to come.

That explains why the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's Cabinet, emphasized the need to do a better job in terms of agriculture, rural work and rural villagers in the first document of the year, which they jointly released this week.

That a document of the same topic has been released immediately after Spring Festival for 17 consecutive years shows the unwavering importance the central authorities attach to agriculture and improving the lives of rural residents.

It is not just because food security is always the top priority for a country with a population of 1.4 billion. It is also because building a modern agricultural sector, updating the governance of rural work and substantially improving the quality of life for rural villagers is vital to the overall development level of this country.

In other words, despite its status as the world's second-largest economy, China cannot expect to realize its national rejuvenation without substantial progress in the rural areas.

That explains why more than 2 million officials have been sent to rural villages nationwide since the 18th National Congress of the CPC Central Committee in 2012 to help with poverty alleviation. And why State-owned enterprises have extended a helping hand to poverty-stricken villages by offering free financial aid or educational resources.

Poverty alleviation efforts must constantly improve by accumulating experience and summing up lessons, and rural villagers must be taught how to help themselves. This has proved to be effective in the past several years.

An increasing number of villages have found a way to make a living by developing rural tourism, or trading local specialties via the internet.

Rome was not built in a day. All the remaining poor villagers will be expected to be lifted out of poverty by the end of this year. But the efforts to prevent them from falling back into poverty may prove to be even harder than the efforts to drag them out of poverty.

This is where the governance of rural work needs to be modernized and why the overall rural social security net needs to be strengthened. This is where rural democracy needs to be optimized so that the management of village affairs by rural villagers themselves will be developed into a virtuous cycle.

This is what the first central document is meant to convey to local governments at all levels.