Prominent Issues Facing the Acceleration of the New Socialist Countryside Construction Process

In October 2005, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to solidly advance the construction of a new socialist countryside in accordance with the requirements of "developed production, affluent living, civilized village customs, tidy village appearance, and democratic management." Over the course of 10 years, generally speaking, driven by the central government's major policies, earnestly implemented by departments at all levels, through the hard work of the vast number of farmers, and especially powerfully pulled by the rapid development of urban construction, gratifying results have been achieved, and the process of rural construction and rural civilized progress has clearly been accelerating. However, the overall situation of rural areas is still far from the planning requirements of new countryside construction, and there is no small gap when compared with comparable factors in developed countries. Many prominent issues urgently need to be analyzed and studied so that we can forge ahead at full speed.

I. Current Main Difficulties

Difficulty One: The income structure is irrational, and a long-term stable income increase mechanism has still not been established.

First, income growth is flashy without substance. Although the per capita net income of farmers showed recovery growth in 2004 and 2005, it mainly came from the central government's tax abolition, local policies supporting agriculture and benefiting farmers, and rising agricultural product prices; in 2014, the per capita income of farmers leaped to 9,892 yuan, of which policy-driven income increase factors accounted for as much as 70%, while the proportion of income truly relying on farmers' independent operation or innovative development was very low.

Second, the income structure is irrational and of a low level. Agriculture is heavy while non-agricultural sectors are light, and household operating income is still the main body of income for many farmers. Farmers' wage income still accounts for only about 30% of net income; moreover, income from crop farming is still the absolute support for income growth for many farmers in many places.

Third, income is unbalanced, and the urban-rural gap has further widened. The average level conceals a considerable portion of low-income farming households, and the wealth gap is widening. According to surveys, farmers with a per capita income below 1,000 yuan currently account for about 30%, and in many places it is even more. Fourth, income quality is not high and stability is very poor. Farmers' income grows year after year, but production expenditures also grow larger accordingly, and the corresponding cash accumulation becomes less and less. In many places, everything depends entirely on young and middle-aged farmers going out to work year-round to earn some money; it is not at all income growth brought by local development or agricultural development.

Difficulty Two: Rural debt is heavy, and the village collective economy is still very weak.

At present, rural collectives almost present a situation of "the collective economy has no strength, there is no ability to do things for the people, the party branch lacks cohesion, and the masses lack centripetal force." In most places, apart from urban villages, few villages have relatively stable income; especially in remote and impoverished mountainous villages, it is fortunate not to be in debt, while nearly 40% of villages are seriously in debt, with the largest reaching as much as four to five million yuan! After the rural tax reform, the resolution of rural debt was basically frozen; there was neither clear policy nor new sources, and repaying even one cent of debt is extremely difficult.

Second, after the tax reform, resolving debt faces two difficulties. First, it is difficult to prohibit new debt. Grassroots organizations are already deeply in debt, but they still need to develop the economy and undertake undertakings, such as building roads and bridges, agricultural water projects, public welfare matters, and necessary office expenses, etc., so they can only borrow and take out loans. Old debts remain unpaid while new debts constantly emerge, and some roll bigger and bigger like snowballs, making the vicious cycle even worse. Second, it is difficult to resolve debt, and it is difficult to handle creditor-debtor relationships. Because village debt is not national debt, higher authorities only give policy but not money; assets that should be sold have all been sold, yet repayment still shows no effect. There is a huge amount of mutual indebtedness, and there are many contradictions between creditors' rights and debts. What should be repaid cannot be repaid, and what should be collected cannot be collected. The central government only considers consolidating reform results and fears farmers' opposition, but has seriously lost fairness. Those who actively paid taxes and retained funds before have not been refunded. Is this fair? Many village debt disputes are not adjudicated by law, and disturbances continue, forming a serious obstacle to advancing new countryside construction.

Difficulty Three: Rural infrastructure remains fragile, and the production and living environment has not improved much.

First, the production foundation remains weak. This is prominent in farmland water conservancy irrigation projects being long outdated and generally unrepaired, with the irrigation rate becoming lower and lower. A reservoir in my hometown that was originally very capable of storing water and ensuring irrigation of farmland can now store less than one meter of water, all ruined because it was contracted to private individuals and village cadres partnered to split the money. Farmers complain but no one solves it. When the opportunity came in previous years for the central government to provide money for renovation and dredging, in most cases it was again intercepted for spending through fraudulent reporting at each level, so most ponds and reservoirs still have not been repaired.

Second, the living environment remains backward. In particular, disorderly village planning, unregulated construction, randomly piled miscellaneous items, sewage flowing everywhere, and mixed human-livestock living are still serious, and the call to improve the environment is growing stronger. Yet our urban construction and urban management planning departments are many, but accomplish nothing; they only care about fines and money, and are unwilling to manage and serve.

Third, care for vulnerable groups remains weakened. In particular, the problem of housing difficulty is very prominent and also very rare! My wife's own maternal uncle is 86 years old and was a relocated household from an old town. Because both daughters developed mental illness after marriage and were unable to support him, he became a household enjoying the five guarantees, but he always relied on us for relief. Until he passed away last year, he still lived in the two old tile-roofed rooms we personally built for him, with no one paying attention. Moreover, a few years earlier, using my reputation in the finance bureau, my wife was deliberately asked to find the town civil affairs office director, and only then was he repaid several years of money he should have received under the five-guarantee benefits, which had always been embezzled and misappropriated by the village clerk. It is truly shameful! Yet local officials brag about how many dangerous houses they helped vulnerable masses renovate, and how they ensured 100% fulfillment of five-guarantee benefits, etc. They only brag nonsense; most is false and little is true! There is no telling how many matters like this exist in rural areas, with no one paying attention at all. The vast majority of village cadres only take their salaries and enrich themselves; even fewer township cadres are willing to take on trouble. Under the reality of the "commuting" cadre system and extremely convenient communications, the two levels of organization are almost paralyzed, and new countryside construction is truly an unknown.

Difficulty Four: Rural social security has a long way to go, and the problems of care for the elderly and medical care remain very prominent.

First, rural elderly care is still mainly based on family support, with no new mechanism at all. With the deepening of rural reform and industrialization and urbanization, apart from blood relations and the support relationship during minority, there is almost nothing else maintaining the two generations of father and son, which leaves traditional morality as the only binding force for supporting the elderly, and this binding force is also increasingly diminishing under the real climate of materialization and money worship. If this bottom line is lost again, the rural elderly care problem will truly be a very serious social problem. Cases in which parents raise multiple children but no one cares for them in old age are increasing in rural areas, and expecting the courts to adjudicate every day has not fundamentally solved it. From another angle, the growing severity of this problem also highlights the irrationality of urban-rural development. The misleading policy of huge urban-rural differences in the supply of public goods as a whole has caused the ratio of urban to rural social security coverage to reach as high as 28:1.

Second, the growth of medical expenses far exceeds the growth rate of farmers' income. "Ten years of hard work to get rich, one day of illness to become poor." Especially for a large number of low- and middle-income farming households, the problems of returning to poverty due to illness and becoming poor due to illness are even more serious. A mountain village cadre once told me: "Now many farmers who get sick, especially seriously ill, often endure minor illnesses slowly and wait to meet the King of Hell for major illnesses, rather than wanting their families to become poor and spend everything, feeling sorry for their children and family." Even if there are some conditions to seek treatment, they are limited by the lagging system in which "counties reimburse more but cannot cure the illness, while big-city good hospitals can cure the illness but reimburse very little," which limits their only hope. Many farmers humorously sum it up: "Have anything but illness; lack anything but money." Although rural cooperative medical care is now being vigorously advanced and integrated, the reimbursement ratio is too watered down. It is said to reimburse 75%, but this cannot be reimbursed and that cannot be reimbursed, and in the end the actual reimbursement is less than 50%. These current conditions are very unoptimistic. About 40% give up seeking medical treatment due to economic difficulties, ranking first among the factors of fearing and being unable to afford medical care.

Difficulty Five: The current state of farmers' quality is worrying, and more and more of the vast world is being lost.

There is a widespread mentality of "small wealth means contentment," where having food and drink is prosperity, and there is a lack of pioneering and enterprising spirit to do great things and build great undertakings. At the same time, there is also a lack of awareness of honesty and credibility, and dishonest behaviors such as stealing, robbing, abduction, and fraud are still relatively prevalent in rural areas. The average number of years of education for the rural labor force is 7.2 years. Illiterate, semi-illiterate, and primary school education levels actually account for more than 50%, junior high, senior high, and secondary specialized education levels account for 48%, and college and above account for less than 2%. Nearly 80% of the labor force has never received any vocational technical training. In addition, now that college students are no longer assigned jobs and it is very expensive, the desire of rural children to attend college has greatly declined, and in the near future a new illiterate stratum will expand sharply. Because the low cultural level determines a lack of scientific and technological knowledge, farming follows the same method for a thousand years, working only relies on hard labor, and they have no specialized skill. Primitive labor output is excessive, and income remains very low. With the development of the market economy and the accelerating process of improving the legal system, many remote and impoverished farmers still have weak awareness, do not study law, do not use law, and do not obey law. In addition, legal popularization in rural areas is almost blank, causing large numbers of farmers to become headless flies, without correct thought and legal norms to guide their social behavior, either inadvertently breaking the law or being unable to protect their legitimate rights and interests, and so on. Such problems abound. The loss of ideological ground is serious. Many farming households have built buildings, bought cars, filled their money bags, and emptied their heads. Under the negative influence of the market economy, their worldview and outlook on life have undergone qualitative change or even distortion, prominently manifested in strong clan consciousness, narrow-mindedness, serious superstition, and severe moral decline, etc. The author saw a report: "A former party branch secretary in his 60s saw old ladies from seventy or eighty years old down to little children around ten years old braving wind and snow and walking more than ten li through mud to go to the temple to worship. He said with deep pain: 'In this weather, I cannot even get a party member meeting together, yet unreliable things are pursued with great enthusiasm. Is the foreign Jesus really stronger than the Communist Party of China? Strange!'" This current situation is truly puzzling. Isn't it so? In our place, transportation is so convenient, the population is so dense, and life is so affluent, yet for elections, even when the village pays villagers more than a hundred yuan per day in labor fees, hardly anyone shows up. This situation cannot but make one think deeply.

II. Main Causes Forming Obstacles

First, understanding is not unified, and action is difficult to coordinate. Although the central government proposed the five-sentence rhyming phrase, what exactly is new countryside construction? How should new countryside construction be carried out? Grassroots cadres and masses still have many doubts. Some believe that the new countryside is something far beyond reach and should specifically refer to rural construction in the central and eastern regions, and that building a new countryside in the backward western regions is unrealistic. Some believe that the new countryside means building new houses and paving asphalt roads, letting farmers move into residential communities, and understand it as new village construction. Some believe it is again an image project and political achievement project, with some new gimmick and superficial show, and once higher authorities inspect and accept it, that is the end of it. Still others believe that for areas where the agricultural population accounts for 80%, it is necessary both to build a new countryside and to transfer farmers, reduce farmers, and eliminate rural areas, and to implement cities supporting villages and industry supporting agriculture. Whether these two approaches are contradictory and opposed, and so on. According to survey tests, 80% of the masses expressed willingness to carry out new countryside construction as long as they do not have to pay out of their own pockets, while only 20% were completely willing to carry out new countryside construction. There is serious fear of difficulty and a strong mentality of waiting, relying, and demanding, and the enthusiasm and initiative to actively participate in new countryside construction are not high. Some believe that lack of money and lack of people make it difficult to do things. Many grassroots cadres have enthusiasm and ideas, but when it comes to concrete implementation, they fear falling into the awkward situation of earlier years in building schools and roads: pressure from above, curses from the masses, debts borne by themselves, and no one caring afterward. The various mindsets of rural cadres and masses reflect from one side that new countryside construction is both a great good thing and a major topic, and in many places it is a difficult problem that needs to be taken seriously.

Second, self-generating capacity is poor, and financial resources are very limited. Fiscal difficulties mean too little supporting funds; rural collectives not only have poor accumulation, but many villages also owe a pile of debt; farmers' income growth is unstable, and a large amount is income from working away from home, with people running only to cities. Who will carry out new countryside construction? According to estimates in the "11th Five-Year Plan" plan, merely completing rural roads, safe drinking water, biogas, toilet renovation, housing construction, environmental remediation, agricultural water projects, etc., generally requires village-level budgetary funds of tens of millions or even over a hundred million yuan. In many rural areas, per capita financial resources are less than 1,000 yuan. Beyond ensuring salaries, operations, and stability, the financial resources that city and county governments can invest in new countryside construction are very limited, and even central investment in new countryside construction does not exceed 100 billion yuan. New countryside construction faces a huge funding gap. If there is a lack of stable investment channels, it is very easy to cause villages to build through debt, forming new debts, or to increase farmers' burdens through further apportionment. In addition, coupled with practical problems such as difficulty in integrating project construction funds, a poor rural financing environment, and an unsound financial supply mechanism, especially poor self-generating capacity and quite insufficient financial services, new countryside construction lacks internal driving force, and many factors present a situation of merely shouting slogans without solid action.

Third, grassroots organizations find it difficult to adapt, and their functions are very weakened. In particular, after the rural tax and fee reform prohibited collecting arbitrary pooled retained funds from farmers, rural collectives are basically: family property divided up, assets sold off, and accumulation exhausted. Everything relies on funds transferred from higher authorities to ensure operations. Township and village-level organizations feel there is little prospect. The reform appears to have the drawback of attending to one thing and losing another: it has taken care of farmers no longer cursing and no longer collecting taxes and fees or arbitrarily apportioning, but it has not taken care of how town and village cadres should lead or how to raise money and achieve results. The signs hang brightly, the teams are neatly appointed, but they simply cannot get money, have no energy to work, and each is pondering where to go, hoping for functional transformation, making it very difficult to effectively connect with new countryside construction. Large numbers of township governments are almost empty-handed and cannot even protect themselves. They joke: "In the past there were no laws, but cadres had methods; now there are laws, but cadres have no methods." After the rural tax reform, because the level itself has no financial resources and what higher authorities give is very insufficient, township work is difficult to carry out normally. Work does not rely on party spirit principles and bureaucratic pressure, but on village cadres doing various tasks only for the sake of the township cadres' old face. The two-level rural organizations should be the main body of new countryside construction, yet the township institutional reform led by reducing burdens has greatly sharply reduced the power and interests of the two-level rural organizations. While making it impossible for rural cadres to do bad things, it also makes it impossible for them to do good things. Thus, many township governments or village two committees almost only take salaries and do not work, and it is enough if mobile phones remain connected. A large amount of work is completely relied on through phone calls back and forth, empty to empty talk. When will new countryside construction be achieved?!

Fourth, the local economy has not developed, and construction becomes empty talk. It cannot be denied that after so many years of reform and opening up, whether induced or forced, many young and middle-aged farmers have exported labor and services, which has brought great changes to rural income, and for a certain village or a certain farming household, it may even have greatly turned things around. But as far as advancing new countryside construction is concerned, it has almost become empty talk. Look at present: how many village collectives have bases? Enterprises? Accumulation? Especially inland or remote impoverished village collectives, it is even more wishful thinking! Without these solid foundations, how can new countryside construction be discussed? Because new countryside construction ultimately depends on raising the overall income level of rural areas, and only when rural capital has accumulation can it be very powerful. In short, a large number of rural areas are currently supported entirely by income from labor export, and new countryside construction is only an insubstantial result and an unsustainable current situation. When can those standards of new countryside construction be reached? The locality is poor as can be, the people are not at home, and the house is covered with spider webs. How can one talk about building a new countryside? That is not empty talk; even if it exists, it is a minority phenomenon, mostly blown up by local officials bragging and journalists wanting to create a sensational story. How many new countryside areas have been built in remote corners?!

III. Measures to Accelerate Advancement

First, understanding must be deepened. At present, the advancement of new countryside construction is to a great extent more about formality and less about real progress; more people like to brag, including our leading cadres and news reporters, while few truly act; there are many scenes of lengthy plans but few things supporting the substance. In response to the current state of ideological understanding of new countryside construction among the broad cadres and masses, a relatively thorough great discussion activity on "what is the new countryside and how to build the new countryside" should be carried out in rural areas nationwide, especially at the county, town, and village levels, and truthful publicity and reporting with momentum, depth, and grounding should be carried out from top to bottom, extensively publicizing the substantive significance, tasks, and requirements of new countryside construction, focusing on resolving the doubts and confusions of the broad cadres and masses, especially grassroots leading cadres, about new countryside construction, eliminating various vague and one-sided understandings and existing misunderstandings, overcoming mindsets such as seeking quick success and instant benefits, retreating in the face of difficulty, waiting, relying, and demanding, and applying one-size-fits-all approaches, further raising the broad cadres and masses' understanding of the importance of building a new socialist countryside, closely combining with the central government's "four comprehensive advancements" national governance strategy, further unifying thought and unifying pace, and truly clarifying that new countryside construction is the overall test of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in rural areas, an important foundation for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the inevitable path for China to stride toward a new era, thereby enabling grassroots cadres and masses to accurately grasp the content, goals, methods, and steps of new countryside construction and ensuring that new countryside construction advances solidly and steadily along the correct direction.

Second, development must be grasped firmly. Development is indeed the absolute truth, and new countryside construction is no exception. If rural labor always runs outside to work and floods into cities desperately squeezing out a living, how can new countryside construction be carried out? Look now: apart from some urban villages that are affluent, few villages can be called affluent, especially in inland and impoverished mountainous rural areas. How many village collectives have accumulation? Enterprises? Assets? Everything has been sold off and exhausted. What will be used to create collective wealth? Local development is what is real; only when the village has money is it truly strong! Therefore, we must turn back to summarize, improve, and reform. Otherwise, if we only rely on transfer payments from higher authorities or project establishment for construction, without autonomy and self-generating capacity, new countryside construction and development will not be stable and lasting. Therefore, counties, towns, and villages must firmly grasp village-level economic development without relaxing, and continuously strengthening the level of village collective accumulation is what is real! Judging from the current state of village-level economic development, hard targets must really be set, some substantive projects must be launched, and the village-level economy must be revitalized, including county-level investment promotion projects that can all choose rural treasured places to take root, blossom, and bear fruit. In particular, local capable people who have gone out to work or are doing business locally must be mobilized to return home to lead or for village collectives to establish enterprise entities. The state must give some preferential treatment, and the financial sector must fully support. Regardless of system or form, ensure that each village establishes at least 1-3 enterprises and develops 3-5 crop farming or breeding undertakings. Each one established must succeed, and each one undertaken must thrive, grasping step by step and continuing until the standard is that the vast majority of villagers no longer want to go out to work. Only when villagers can plan things at home, earn money, support their families, and prosper, and the whole family, old and young, can be together every day enjoying family happiness, can the goals of new countryside construction be realized one by one. This should be taken as the new thinking and primary pursuit of current new countryside construction, and the development layout should be vigorously adjusted.

Third, quality must be improved. With the advancement of urbanization and the in-depth development of new countryside construction, improving the overall quality of rural areas is a very basic issue. Therefore, three aspects must be grasped without relaxation:

First, the consolidation and development of rural education achievements must be strengthened. In addition to consolidating the level of compulsory education in rural areas and ensuring the school enrollment rate, support for farmer college students must be increased, various preferential support policies must be implemented, and every possible means must be used to ensure that large numbers of farmer college students can study until they graduate from university. No matter where they go in the future, this will have far-reaching influence.

Second, farmers' skills training must be strengthened. Training funds must be truly implemented, and financial support for quality improvement must be increased. In particular, county-level authorities must ensure the implementation of special fund budgets and guarantee supply, strictly supervise use, and truly apply them to training farmers' skills. For farmers under 45 years old, it must be ensured that they learn 1-2 professional skills. This should be a hard assessment indicator for leading cadres at all levels, especially village-contracted cadres, and must be rigidly implemented down to each young farmer, so that they can support their families and make a living anywhere, have a place to use their talents, and even earn big money, and can no longer be poor or low-income because of lacking skills. At the same time, through skills training, help them master new agricultural science and technology and new levels of operation, advance the development of modern rural service industries, and move toward becoming new modern farmers.

Third, the improvement of farmers' civilized literacy must be strengthened. Through necessary and practical effective and healthy activities such as civilized households and new residents, farmers should be urged to improve their urban living literacy and degree of civilization. For example, in communities and neighborhoods, carry out effective competitive activities such as stressing hygiene, health, morality, honesty, mutual assistance, and harmony, promoting one another, helping and spurring one another, and striving to improve farmers' civilized literacy for urbanized life.

Fourth, financial resources must be expanded. According to preliminary estimates by the National Bureau of Statistics, by 2020 the total demand for new countryside construction funds in China will be roughly around 15 trillion yuan. In addition to national fiscal input, these funds also require more social investment. Therefore, establishing an effective mechanism for raising construction funds through diverse channels and multiple means is a major issue urgently needing solution in new countryside construction. In particular, truly solving village-level independent financial resources is key. In my view, at present we must focus on three aspects to shift direction and exert effort:

First, effort must be exerted on "giving more." The key is to truly and substantively adjust the fiscal expenditure structure. The central government and provinces should establish special budgetary funds for new countryside construction, and can integrate funds such as the "five subsidies and one exemption" funds, or grain production awards, and special fiscal funds supporting agriculture, etc., into special budgetary funds for new countryside construction. In addition to the central government, finance below the provincial level must also increase investment. In accordance with the spirit of the central government's "three higher than" provisions, truly implement that the increment of fiscal funds supporting agriculture must be higher than the previous year, the proportion of government bonds and budgetary funds used for new countryside construction must be higher than the previous year, and among them the funds directly used to improve rural production and living conditions must be higher than the previous year. In particular, the intensity of land transfer fees supporting new countryside construction must be increased, and it must be clearly stipulated in policy that a larger proportion of land transfer fees be extracted for new countryside construction.

Second, effort must be exerted on striving for and integrating funds. The key is to use rural project funds in a concentrated way and advance new countryside construction by highlighting key points. In particular, the county level must seize major investment opportunities in which the state increases investment in new countryside construction, including the Western Development, high-tech zones, and the "Belt and Road," carefully study policy guidance and funding direction, do a good job in matching project establishment and competing for funds, and not let any opportunity slip by. On this basis, for the use of construction funds, the compartmentalized system must be broken, integration should be mainly county-based, the new countryside construction office should conduct overall planning and layout, finance should coordinate fund budgets and arrange tied use, and functional departments should be responsible for the specific implementation of their respective projects, thereby forming a cohesive force for new countryside construction.

Third, effort must be exerted on mobilizing the enthusiasm of all parties and broadly opening up construction funds. The key is to give full play to the guiding and bonding role of fiscal funds, like "four ounces moving a thousand catties." Adhere to the overall approach of fiscal funds being invested in key project construction and social funds being invested in daily construction, fully give play to the main-body role of rural communities and farmers, and guide the whole society to actively invest in new countryside construction. Formulate more and more substantive preferential policies, form a depression for investment, vigorously attract investment, support industrial connection and innovation and entrepreneurship sector economic development, and encourage real estate development and many other private capitals and social organizations to invest in building a new countryside. At the same time, increase the investment strength of financial institutions in rural areas, implement credit support under multiple systems, and continuously enhance the "money flow" of new countryside construction.

Fifth, supporting reforms must be carried out.

First, policies must be formulated according to local conditions and used flexibly. In formulating policies, full consideration must be given to grassroots realities, and they should not be too dogmatic and mechanical, so that under the premise of major policies and major plans, grassroots can flexibly use policies in light of various problems and contradictions emerging in the construction process and achieve the greatest economic and social benefits at the lowest cost. In particular, in terms of policy funds, they should be more detailed and targeted, making it easy for lower levels to plan and operate, rather than only giving macro policies and not specific policies and project funds, which leads to blindness in grassroots construction.

Second, reduce "one pole thrust to the bottom," delegate power, and give grassroots greater space for implementation and operation. Put main energy into optimizing the development environment for grassroots and providing project construction funds, rather than handling everything on their behalf. Give grassroots more space in policy, such as in land and taxation, and, in line with the principle of developing and strengthening regional economies, give play to grassroots subjective initiative and creativity. It is suggested that higher authorities hand over some projects implemented in townships to townships for coordinated integration and implementation, with higher-level functional departments conducting specific supervision, rather than letting higher-level departments only manage money and issue orders while towns and villages only handle technology, manpower, and organizational implementation. Give townships some autonomy.

Third, increase responsibility for public goods and optimize the grassroots cadre team. Public goods in rural areas that should originally be provided by the government should be borne by finance at or above the county level, so as to reduce the repeated occurrence of phenomena in which towns and villages have more responsibilities than financial power and resort to apportionment or debt operations. At the same time, strengthen the leadership of central towns and key towns, especially select outstanding young cadres to serve or temporarily serve in towns and villages, recruit more outstanding college graduates to reinforce the rural front line, and enhance the scientific and technological knowledge energy and vital force of new countryside construction.

Sixth, leadership must be strengthened. New countryside construction is a massive systematic project. Organizations at all levels, especially at the county level, must take new countryside construction as the core and overall focus of "three rural" work, draw on forces, and establish specialized institutions at each level like the well-off office in the early 1990s, so as to concretely and effectively coordinate and guide new countryside construction work throughout the region, and truly take responsibility for the overall planning, general guidance, and specific organizational implementation of new countryside construction, including coordination and cooperation among various business departments, integration of project funds, deployment of personnel, and the organizational implementation and supervision of work at each stage, etc. The town and village levels must, in light of actual conditions, while improving institutions, ensure that each village has more than 2 administrative cadres or scientific and technical personnel stationed in the village to ensure implementation, provide guidance, take overall responsibility, and undergo hard assessment. At the same time, specific and feasible work plans and implementation rules must be formulated for the entire advancement work, target advancement timetables must be listed village by village, and new countryside construction must be organized and implemented step by step, truly forming a powerful working mechanism in which each level grasps the next and each level ensures implementation. The entire advancement work must be included in the hard indicators of annual performance assessment for party and government teams and leading cadres at all levels, and serve as an important basis for team assessment and cadre rewards, punishments, appointment, and use. Establish an effective evaluation and acceptance mechanism that rewards the excellent, punishes the poor, and has clear rewards and punishments, and implement qualitative and quantitative assessment. It is suggested that in the future all various assessments and meeting standards for agriculture, rural areas, and farmers be comprehensively consolidated into one strict assessment item, new countryside construction, and then use the development assessment of various economic, social, and even ecological and civilized cell targets to powerfully advance the process of new countryside construction, ensuring that new countryside construction advances to a new level and reaches its goals.