How to Find the Right Policy Levers for Building a Moderately Prosperous Rural Society

The China Development Research Foundation recently held in Beijing the launch and seminar for the "China Development Report 2013/14: China's Path to Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects in Rural Areas" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report").

Over the past 30-plus years, with the implementation of a series of reform measures, China's rural development has made remarkable progress. The "revitalization" of the 1980s, the "stabilization" of the 1990s, and the "feedback" policies implemented for rural areas after 2000 injected strong momentum into agricultural and rural development. The "Report" points out that the per capita annual net income of Chinese farmers increased from 133.6 yuan in 1978 to 8895.9 yuan in 2013, various social security systems were gradually established in rural areas, hundreds of millions of rural people escaped poverty, and earth-shaking changes took place in rural China.

However, while China's rural development has achieved notable accomplishments, obvious shortcomings still exist in many areas such as income, social security, education, health, and governance.

Lu Mai, secretary-general of the China Development Research Foundation, said that the large outflow of agricultural labor; the rapid development of rural population aging; and the further advancement of marketization and urbanization require changes in agricultural production and operation methods as well as the rural land system; the emergence of new problems such as the partial deterioration of the rural ecological environment and living environment has made the solution of existing rural problems more complex.

Given the arduousness of the task of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in rural areas, the "Report" suggests that when advancing various institutional reforms, the "four inputs" and "three guarantees" should be taken as key policy levers.

The so-called "four inputs" means increasing inputs in agriculture and other rural infrastructure, rural human capital, rural environmental protection, and community building. The "three guarantees" means taking the rural minimum living security, old-age security, and medical security as key components of building a rural social safety net.