Central Economic Work Conference convenes, agriculture, rural areas and farmers remain top priority

The annual Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing yesterday, and the much-anticipated deployment of economic work for 2016 will also emerge as a result. Although the conference is still ongoing and no communique has been released yet, the meeting held by the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on the 14th has already set the tone for this conference, from which we can analyze some of the trends and development threads of China's economy in 2016.

The Political Bureau meeting held on December 14 proposed that we must persist in making work related to “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” the top priority of the whole Party's work, and at the same time pay more attention to doing a good job in urban work. This means that in 2016, work related to “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” will still occupy an extremely important position in the overall economic layout. Ye Xingqing, director of the Rural Economy Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that future agricultural development is mainly about making up for the shortcomings in agricultural modernization and truly realizing the synchronization of the four modernizations.

That is, we must reverse as soon as possible the situation in which agricultural modernization lags behind, because the central government requires synchronized development of the four modernizations, but agricultural modernization is the weak link. Therefore, during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, it is about making up for shortcomings, making up for this shortcoming in agricultural modernization. This is the keynote of agricultural work. To make up for this shortcoming in agriculture, the general direction is what the central government has proposed: to take the road of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics featuring high efficiency, safety, natural conservation and environmental friendliness. This is a major goal. We still need to transform the model of agricultural development and promote the transformation of the driving forces of agricultural growth, that is, shifting from the previous policy-oriented approach to a quality- and efficiency-oriented approach, promoting technological progress in agriculture, and in particular promoting appropriately scaled agricultural operations and raising agricultural labor productivity. Then we need to promote the sustainability of the agricultural environment, and also ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products. There is also a very important goal, which is to promote the sustainable growth of farmers' incomes. These are all major tasks for making up for agriculture's shortcomings in the next step.

This year's Political Bureau meeting also emphasized that urbanization is the inevitable path of modernization. It is necessary to promote the citizenization of migrant workers and accelerate the increase in the urbanization rate of the registered population. By accelerating the citizenization of migrant workers, advancing housing system reform that takes meeting the needs of new citizens as its starting point, expanding effective demand, and stabilizing the real estate market.

It can thus be seen that further promoting urbanization will also become a focus of the next step in economic work. Ye Xingqing pointed out that to promote the development of urbanization in the future, it is necessary to do a good job in three aspects.

Urbanization is the inevitable path of modernization; it is both a result and a driving force. To promote the healthy development of urbanization, there are currently several prominent problems: one is the problem of housing inventory. This is a preventive measure for us to guard against a real estate bubble and even to guard against the systemic risks brought about by the bursting of a bubble, namely, we must promote destocking in real estate. The second problem is the citizenization of migrant workers, that is, implementing institutional reform and promoting the full coverage of basic public services for the permanent resident population of cities and towns. The third is to pay attention to the problem of the ecological environment. From the perspective of improving the efficiency of land resource use, it should be a kind of compact urbanization, that is, we cannot engage in sprawl-style urbanization that wastes land resources.