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.