Poverty relief transitions to governance

As China moves beyond the five-year transition period following its poverty alleviation success, preventing a return to poverty is becoming a permanent part of the country's rural development strategy, experts said.

At the annual central working conference on agriculture at the end of last year, President Xi Jinping stressed the need to consolidate and expand poverty alleviation achievements. He called for integrating routine assistance measures into the rural vitalization strategy and guarding against large-scale relapses into poverty.

Agricultural experts said the conference marked a shift from campaign-style support to long-term governance in rural areas, underscoring a structural adjustment in how farmers' income grows.

Cheng Guoqiang, director of the National Food Security Strategy Research Institute at Renmin University of China, said the conference proposed establishing a regular mechanism to prevent people from falling back into poverty or becoming newly impoverished, incorporating it into the broader rural vitalization strategy.

"Preventing poverty is no longer a temporary task but a permanent component of China's rural development," Cheng said, adding that the focus has shifted from "problem solving" to "system governance". The shift aims to provide long-term security for rural residents while ensuring the sustainability of poverty alleviation efforts, a key step toward advancing common prosperity, he said.

Conference participants also called for promoting stable income growth for farmers, including improving income protection mechanisms for grain producers through pricing policies, subsidies and agricultural insurance.

They urged efforts to diversify farmers' income sources, including enhancing services for migrant workers and supporting those returning to their hometowns to start businesses or find local jobs.

Hu Bingchuan, a researcher at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said as China begins the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), sustained and stable income growth for farmers will be foundational to agricultural modernization, urban-rural integration and advancing common prosperity.

The focus of farmers' income growth is shifting from reliance on agricultural production to building a diversified income structure, Hu said. For a long time, farmers' income depended mainly on agricultural production, particularly by increasing yields or expanding scale.

"However, with prices of bulk agricultural products such as grain remaining low and production costs rising, profit margins at the planting stage have become increasingly limited," Hu said.

He said greater emphasis will be placed on improving income protection mechanisms for grain growers and refining subsidy policies to stabilize basic agricultural income. Authorities are also urged to promote county-level industrial development and support entrepreneurship, building a diversified income structure that combines operation, wages, property and transfer income.

The conference highlighted counties as the basic unit for advancing urban-rural integration and rural vitalization, calling for the cultivation of "county-level industries that enrich local communities".

"The emphasis on cultivating county-level industries is aimed at involving farmers more deeply in industrial chains, rather than confining them to primary production," Hu said. Farmers' participation will be expanded by developing industries such as agricultural processing, cold-chain logistics and rural tourism.

"More importantly, improving mechanisms that link farmers with industrial chains will allow them to share in value-added gains, instead of passively bearing market fluctuations," he said.

zhaoyimeng@chinadaily.com.cn