Farmers' Daily, farmer.com.cn:
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we need to deepen rural reform and speed up reforms regarding key links in rural areas. What major measures will you take to deepen rural reform this year and during the 14th Five-Year Plan period? Thanks.
Tang Renjian:
Rural reform mainly concerns micro business entities, market systems and support and protection policies. Over the past years, we have carried out reform in various aspects. Entering the new stage of development, the biggest driving force to advance rural vitalization across the board is to reform. However, we are facing new requirements, limits, environment and conditions in deepening reform, which urges us to push forward with it in a steady, prudent and appropriate manner and apply down-to-earth measures for solid progress. We should especially avoid flip-flopping on reform issues. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that reform concerns famers' fundamental rights and interests, so we should stay patient and proceed when we are sure what measures are fit. The Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs will act in line with the general spirit of rural reform. I'd like to invite Mr. Wu to introduce the concrete measures.
Wu Hongyao:
Mr. Tang just briefed us on the general principles and major points in deepening rural reform. Now I'd like to talk about the concrete measures.
Since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the CPC Central Committee has set out an overall and systematic plan to further agricultural and rural reform. We surmounted many obstacles to carry the reform further by formulating a series of major reform plans and laws and regulations. The main framework for improving the healthy development of agriculture and rural areas with "multiple pillars" has been established. For the next step, to advance rural vitalization across the board and accelerate agricultural and rural modernization in the new stage of development, we should continue to vitalize resources in rural areas by stepping up reform in major links and areas. The "No. 1 Central Document" introduces the main tasks regarding this, and the three major aspects are as follows:
Firs, we must consolidate and improve the basic rural operation system. After years of effort, we have basically completed the work to determine, register and certify contracted rural land rights. Rights on 1.5 billion mu of contracted land have been certified and over 200 million famers have received their certifications. For the next step, we should consolidate and make the best use of the progress we have made. We will carry out trial reform on extending the second round of land contracts for another 30 years upon expiration, and keep land contracting practices stable and unchanged on a long-term basis. In the meanwhile, we will update the agricultural operation system and focus on fostering the two new agribusiness models, namely, family farms and farmer cooperatives, while supporting the development of organizations that provide specialized agricultural services. This will help us guide small household farmers to move forward with agricultural modernization. This year, we have another major rural reform task to complete, which is to basically finish the reform of rural collective property rights system. It consists of three parts: first, to confirm the members of collective economic organizations across the board; second, to steadily push forward the reform of collective operating assets based on a shareholding cooperative system; and third, to actively search for effective ways to develop a new type of the rural collective economy.
Second, we will deepen reforms of the rural land system, focusing on contracted land and rural homesteads. We've mentioned these two areas just now. The new round of pilot reforms of the rural homestead system has started. As this involves the vital interests of rural residents and the situation is quite complex, we will deepen trial reforms, making innovations before dispensing with the old patterns, and carrying out reforms in a steady and prudent manner. While completing our basic work in investigation, confirmation and registration of rural homesteads, we will focus on separating ownership, qualification and use rights and seek to tangible achievements in our pilot reforms. Another part of our reform is rural collective land for development purposes. As the newly revised Land Administration Law has taken effect, the legal barrier on marketization of these lands has been removed, but there needs further clarification on trade requirements and procedures, on ownership, qualification and use rights, and on distribution of income as we further explore such marketization. Moreover, in terms of rural land accessibility, the No.1 central document clarifies the need to make good use of idle and existing land for construction, carry out negative list management, and prioritize land use for rural industrial development and rural construction. In view of the actual needs in developing industries like rural tourism, we will explore flexible and diverse land use measures and ensure that land accessibility won't stand in the way of rural vitalization.
Third, we will establish a guarantee system to prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas. The key to rural revitalization is to prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas through huge investment and solid efforts. The No.1 central document has issued a specific requirement on increasing investment and put forward major policy measures to guarantee spending. It has introduced five measures on government spending. First, the general public budget should prioritize spending on both agriculture and rural areas. Second, central government spending on agriculture and rural areas should be expanded. Third, we need to establish and implement a set of evaluation methods for increasing the share of revenue from land transfers diverted to agriculture and rural areas. We introduced these methods last year and we need to review and evaluate the implementation. Fourth, we need to further improve the long-term mechanism for integration of different rural development funds. Fifth, we must support local governments in issuing general bonds and special bonds for modern agriculture facilities and rural development.
It made four requirements in regard to financial support. First, it is necessary to increase medium- and long-term credit support for agricultural and rural infrastructure development. Second, we have to expand small loans to rural businesses. Third, we must encourage the development of special financial products to support new agricultural businesses, as well as foster new industries and new business models in rural areas. Fourth, we have to scale up the practice of awarding instead of subsidizing special agricultural product insurance around the country. Moreover, we must also support the establishment of rural vitalization funds through market-based measures to mobilize social capital in its support to rural industrial development. Thank you.
