What were Li Keqiang's agricultural heart and agricultural economics?
·“When he was young, his trouser cuffs were covered in mud, and his hands were full of calluses.”
·The essence of modernization is to realize the evolution from traditional agriculture to a modern industrial society, from an agricultural country into an industrial country.
·As for rural reform, our attitude is to “explore, explore, and explore again”.
·We must first figure out whether it is the mayor who provides employment and gives migrant workers a living, or whether migrant workers, through employment, have prospered the city and then supported the mayor.
·Let farmers live as well as city people.
Premier Li Keqiang, who moves with ease on the stage of domestic affairs and diplomacy, had as his first identity upon entering society that of a “farmer”, and his first “position” was Party branch secretary of a production brigade. For 4 years, he ate and lived with farmers, not only carrying stones and transplanting rice seedlings, but also assigning tasks to the production brigade members and recording work points every day, “finding a way to let everyone eat their fill”.
With this as the starting point, in the years that followed, whether in academic research in his youth or in exploratory practice after taking office in local areas, one of the core issues Li Keqiang focused on was how to enable Chinese farmers, who for 5000 years had faced the yellow earth with their backs to the sky, to “live the same kind of life as city people”.
At a meeting a few days ago, Li Keqiang said emotionally to the heads of local governments and departments present: “Most of us have been farmers and have eaten farmers' food; even if not, our ancestors should have been farmers. We should work for farmers with feeling.”
Beyond this deep feeling, Li Keqiang also found a “modern” path for improving farmers' lives. He stressed that to narrow the urban-rural gap, farmers must first have opportunities for vertical mobility and equal development; this is an inherent requirement of a socialist country. We should take reform and innovation as the driving force, give good play to the radiating and driving role of new urbanization, and accelerate the modernization of agriculture.
When he was young, his trouser cuffs were covered in mud, and his hands were full of calluses
During an visit to Italy in October 2014, Li Keqiang, at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, recalled his own experience of going hungry. He said: “When I was young, I lived in rural China for many years and personally experienced the difficult years of not having enough to eat and going hungry…… The impression left by hunger is one I will never forget.”
In 1974, 19-year-old Li Keqiang went to Damiao Commune in Fengyang County, Anhui Province, as a sent-down educated youth. Because of his strong organizing ability, he quickly stood out and became Party branch secretary of the Damiao Brigade. Villagers recalled that Li Keqiang, then “thin and dark”, was the best worker among the students. Together with the villagers, he “planted crops and sweated profusely, and his hands were full of calluses”.
A villager recalled to media reporters that Li Keqiang always “rushed to do the work”; sometimes, after bending over to transplant rice seedlings for a long time, his back hurt so much that he could not bear it, and “he would crawl to the nearby field ridge and roll a couple of times, and then feel a little better”.
On May 1, 1973, Class 6 of the second year of senior high school at Hefei No. 8 Middle School took a group photo at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing; second from the right in the back row is 18-year-old Li Keqiang.
In addition to hard labor such as carrying loads on his shoulders and hands, Li Keqiang was also responsible for assigning tasks to all members of the brigade and recording work points. At the press conference during the 2014 Two Sessions, recalling this experience, he said that at the time he worked from dawn to dusk, wishing he could fix what every laborer would do that day, yet in the end there still was not enough to eat. Later, the contract responsibility system was introduced, things were opened up and made flexible, and farmers decided for themselves what to do; “the problem of food and clothing was solved in just a few years”.
The 4 years of educated youth life formed Li Keqiang's initial concept of “delegating power”, and also nurtured his people-centered feeling of standing on the earth. During a group discussion during the “Two Sessions”, he directly asked a grassroots official about progress in transforming hanging slope land, “Have you brought down 60 degrees?” And during an earlier grassroots inspection in rural Hubei, he climbed a steep slope in the snow, picked up a handful of soil and rubbed it, and sighed to the owner of the contracted land: “This soil is too thin; it can only yield about a hundred jin a year, right?”
Some media commented that the reason Li Keqiang had a special feeling for farmers was mainly that when he was young, his trouser cuffs were covered in mud and his hands were full of calluses.
On December 29, 2012, Li Keqiang inspected the difficulty of planting on hanging slope land in Qingbao Village, Longfeng Town, Enshi, Hubei Province.
The essence of modernization is to realize the evolution from traditional agriculture to a modern industrial society
On October 30, 2014, Li Keqiang replied to the teachers and students of the first Hope Primary School. He wrote: “Poverty is indeed frightening, but losing the right to equal education is even more frightening; eliminating poverty may be difficult to deliver in a short time, but creating fairness must not be delayed.”
In March 1990, Li Keqiang, as vice chairman of the China Youth Development Foundation, led an inspection team to Jinzhai County, Anhui Province, and selected the site for the country's first “Hope Primary School”. Over 25 years, the Project Hope has raised more than 10 billion yuan in total, built 18936 Hope Primary Schools, and assisted 4.95 million poor students.
In the letter, Li Keqiang recalled that when he came here to choose the site for the country's first Hope Primary School, it was late winter and early spring, and “I never imagined that the first seed of Project Hope, in the frozen soil deep in the Dabie Mountains, would break through the earth and grow into such a towering tree with luxuriant branches and leaves today”.
With the simple idea that “reading changes destiny”, Li Keqiang vigorously promoted “Project Hope schools” across rural China. In addition, he began to think more deeply about “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers”. While pursuing a master's and doctoral degree in economics at Peking University, his research direction always centered on solving the urban-rural gap.
In Li Keqiang's master's thesis, “Rural Industrialization: Choices in Structural Transformation”, he analyzed that over the past 10 years, the rise and development of rural industrialization in China had set China on a unique path of industrialization and brought about a brand-new situation in the national economy.
Li Keqiang's master's thesis (left), doctoral thesis (right).
In his doctoral thesis, “On the Ternary Structure of China's Economy”, Li Keqiang stated at the outset: “So far, the course of economic development of many countries in the world shows that the essence of modernization is to realize the evolution from traditional agriculture to a modern industrial society, from an agricultural country into an industrial country. Therefore, in the process of moving toward modernization, a country must first carry out industrialization.”
This was Li Keqiang in his youth, thinking about the question of “letting farmers live a modern life”, and it can also be seen as the earliest embryo of his concepts of “agricultural modernization” and “new urbanization”.
Develop agriculture with an industrial approach, and turn the “granary” into a “kitchen” with higher returns
At a recent State Council meeting, Li Keqiang talked about his experience inspecting abroad more than 10 years earlier. At that time, as the person in charge of Henan Province, he went to Canada to inspect modern agriculture. He noticed that when introducing the situation, the other side never simply said “agriculture” (Agriculture), but always insisted on using a complete phrase, “agriculture industry” (Agriculture Industry, literally “agricultural industry”).