What kind of rural areas will we be living in during the 13th Five-Year Plan period?

At the village edges, garbage strewn everywhere; around the houses, sewage flowing freely…… Under the central government's development goal of building green, eco-friendly rural areas, the second National Conference on Improving Rural Living Environments held here deployed a series of measures to improve rural living environments.

From overall planning to detailed monitoring, from garbage disposal to drinking water safety, from investment decided case by case to the maintenance and construction of public service mechanisms…… Detail after detail has us wondering: in the upcoming “13th Five-Year Plan”, what kind of rural areas will we be living in?

Will farmers' houses still be built from “one mold”?

——“Top-level design” comprehensively improves the current situation of “no planning for villages” and “no plans for construction.”

For a long time, rural homestead construction has been chaotic, with self-built farmer houses mostly being rectangular “coffin houses” built along roadsides. They have poor lighting, ventilation and air flow, and they are all identical, nearly destroying the natural scenery of green mountains and clear waters.

Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Chen Zhenggao said at the meeting: “The problem of rural planning being detached from rural reality is quite common. We must vigorously promote simple and easy-to-implement rural planning, focus on farmer housing construction control and village improvement, and basically achieve planning management for all farmer housing construction by 2020. We will further expand the number of protected villages and bring traditional village protection onto a legal track.”

Zhuang Guotai, Director of the Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said: “China will focus on the Action Plan for Water Pollution Prevention and Control, ensuring that by 2020, an additional 130,000 administrative villages complete comprehensive environmental improvement, formulate overall plans for the ‘reward for treatment’ policy, and make coordinated arrangements for contiguous rural environmental treatment in the next period.”

Will straw and plastic film still harm rural areas?

——Coordinated planning solves the problems of straw burning polluting the air and residual agricultural film polluting the environment.

A relevant official of the Ministry of Agriculture made clear at the meeting that straw and plastic film fall within the category of agricultural waste, and agricultural waste treatment will be incorporated into the overall planning for rural living environments.

Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Xinrong said: “By 2020, China will achieve control of total agricultural water use, reduce the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and gradually achieve basically resource-based utilization of livestock and poultry manure, agricultural film and straw.”

According to the deployment, China will coordinate and plan county-level treatment priorities, scientifically determine treatment models, launch and implement agricultural waste resource utilization projects, and take the lead in building a group of demonstration counties nationwide with complete functions, sound mechanisms and effective operation for agricultural waste resource utilization.

Will beautiful villages still have “forgotten corners”?

——Set standards, use villages and whole counties as basic units, and achieve comprehensive breakthroughs.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development made clear that it will formulate green village standards and promote them nationwide for evaluation.

The Ministry of Agriculture proposed that it will comprehensively and solidly advance the creation of 1,100 “beautiful villages”, strengthen the construction of pastoral eco-type and sightseeing-experience villages, and cultivate new rural business forms.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection stated that it will select about 10 counties and urban districts nationwide to carry out pilot comprehensive reform and innovation of rural environmental protection systems and mechanisms, and explore effective ways to promote coordinated development of county-level economic and social construction and ecological environmental protection. It will focus treatment on villages around important drinking water source areas to ensure the water quality safety of drinking water sources; and take whole-county advancement as the main approach to give full play to the scale effect of contiguous treatment.

Will rural travel still mean “walking dark night roads by feel”?

——Muddy roads on rainy days and pitch darkness at night: rural travel will welcome a “bright era.”

At present, the proportion of administrative villages in China connected by roads has reached 99.7%, but roads within villages have not yet been fully built.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development proposed that the “13th Five-Year Plan” will comprehensively launch road construction within administrative villages. First, the focus will shift from hardened road surfaces to gravel roads, which can not only save investment but also use existing roadbeds, and is conducive to environmental protection and the movement and advancement of animals and microorganisms; second, enterprise-based construction and management will be promoted, advancing cooperation between government and enterprises.

In addition, village public lighting is also an indispensable facility in modern rural areas. At present, more than 80% of rural areas in Zhejiang, Liaoning and other provinces and regions in China have achieved lighting. Chen Zhenggao said that through enterprise-based operation, State Grid Corporation of China and China Southern Power Grid will be promoted to carry out pilot projects first in some provinces and regions.

Where will the money come from to improve rural living environments?

——Improving rural living environments requires substantial investment in every task, and the whole of society must be mobilized, from government to individuals.

Zhao Jie, Inspector of the Department of Agriculture of the Ministry of Finance, said that rural living environments belong to rural public services, and the public service operation and maintenance mechanism should be linked with policies such as one-case-one-discussion fiscal rewards and subsidies, achieving the goal of “small reform, big mechanism; small funds, big stage.” From 2013 to 2015, the central government arranged 6.9 billion yuan to focus on supporting beautiful village projects such as roads within villages, water conservancy and environmental treatment; and arranged 668.8 billion yuan to support basic projects such as rural road construction, rural safe drinking water, biogas construction, relocation for poverty alleviation, and renovation of dilapidated rural houses.

Zhuang Guotai, Director of the Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said that leveraged by the central government's rural energy conservation and emission reduction “seed” funds, local governments have increased investment, integrated resources, actively cultivated market entities, and encouraged social capital to participate in comprehensive rural environmental treatment. This model has already been recognized by the market.

Chen Wu, Chairman of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, introduced that from 2013 to 2015, Guangxi invested a cumulative 35.5 billion yuan at all levels of government, of which the fund integration ratio reached 80%. It has used a 10 billion yuan special loan from the Agricultural Development Bank of China, and through enterprise-based operation, gradually entrusted the operation and management of rural cleaning, garbage and sewage treatment facilities, and biogas to enterprises.