China issued the “No. 1 central document,” titled "the Opinions of the Chinese Communist Central and the State Council Regarding Learning and Applying the Experience of Thousand Villages Demonstration and Ten Thousand Villages Renovation Project to Forcefully and Effectively Promote Full Rural Vitalization” for 2024 on February 3, 2024. It is the 12th “No.1 central document” on “three rural issues” since the 18th National Congress. The document focuses on ensuring national food security and preventing large-scale sliding back into poverty as a bottom line so as to improve development of rural industries, rural construction and rural governance; to strengthen technology and reform drivers and step-up measures to increase farmers’ income; and to underscore the Party’s full leadership on “three rural issues.” The related implications and observations are listed as follows:
1.Continue promoting “learning from Xi Jinping.” Xi initiated the “Thousand Village Project” when serving as Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee in 2003. Around 10,000 administrative villages were selected from nearly 40,000 villages for comprehensive renovation in Zhejiang Province, and about1,000 central villages were built as well-off demonstration villages. In 20 years, the “Thousand Villages Demonstration and Ten Thousand Villages Renovation” project has evolved to “Thousand Villages Excellence and Ten Thousand Villages Beauty” and “Thousand Villages Future and Ten Thousand Villages Prosperity.” It has leaped high as goal of building modern countryside, an effective way of coprosperity of urban and rural areas, the core of modern rural governance, the innovation of rural civilization inheritance, and the “Chinese solution” for continued rural development. Zhejiang Television (ZJTV) integrated with the joint news reports of CCTV to continuously report the “inspiration of 3820 strategic project” and air a series of documentary on the “Thousand Village Project” in late January, trying to deal with “three rural issues” with “political correctness” thinking, when “two establishes” and “two safeguards” are highly emphasized and resolutely upheld.
2.Ensure food security. China regards food production as the top priority of the agricultural work, stressing that “people’s rice bowls should be firmly held in their hands anytime,” and that “our rice bowls should mainly fill Chinese grain.” The 7th Session of the 14th NPC Standing Committee passed the “Grain Security Law” to safeguard the effective supply of food, to ensure national food security, to enhance the ability to prevent and resist food security risks, and to maintain economic and social stability and national security. In fact, China claimed its grain production reached a new high last year, maintaining grain output of above 1.3 trillion jin in 9 consecutive years. However, due to the external risks like accelerating geopolitical conflicts and frequent extreme weather, and the internal problems like crop varieties and imbalanced regional layout, the law is of great significance in addressing these issues. There have been several cases of local party committees and governments involved in illegal land requisitions and constructions without proper supervision from related supervisory departments. And non-agricultural problems like illegal land occupation for landscaping or building “green shelters” on farmland still exist, the No.1 document constantly calls for vigorous protections of arable lands and farmlands, urging the local governments to shoulder the responsibility of fully implementing food security with local party committees.
3.Promote urban and rural harmony. Premier Li Qiang of the State Council inspected the new urbanization projects in Sichuan Province and the constructions of Chengdu Chongqing area double city economic circle in mid-December last year. He stressed the need to hold the practical intentions of human-centered new urbanization, prioritizing the transformation of rural populations to urban residents, and integrating the promotion of new urbanization with the implementation of functional zoning strategy, and advancing new urbanization with the spirit of reform and innovation. At present, it aims at the coordination of new urbanization and full rural vitalization, regarding urbanization as a significant means to solve the “three rural issues,” as a strong support for regional development, and as a key point for expanding domestic demands and upgrading industry. However, while the conception of new and high-quality development is widely promoted, lots of local government officials have blindly borrowed money for image and performance projects (constructions), leading to the damage of ecological environment and thus making the goal of urban and rural harmony nowhere to be seen.
4.Poverty alleviation transformation to targeted assistance. China announced the completion of the goal for poverty alleviation at the end of 2020 and has readjusted the focus from reducing poverty to preventing a large-scale return to poverty and improving the monitoring mechanisms for it. The goal is to spot the risk of sinking back to poverty, identify it, and then implement poverty assistance in a month to make sure an early detection and intervention followed by comprehensive assistance. Meanwhile, the “Hundred counties, Hundred industries, Hundred billion” project (the Three Hundred Projects) has been promoted. The project, in counties for paired assistance and targeted support, selected rural-oriented industries with characteristics to provide services such as product development, industry upgrading, production and marketing link, and promotion based on the model of “one county and one industry, one township and one product, once village and one base” for high-quality development in the targeted counties. China claimed that 63.5% of the monitored targets have been ruled out of the risk of sliding back to poverty and the rest has been under assistance measures. And the total number of poverty alleviation labor forces has reached 33.969 million throughout the year, exceeding the annual goal of 3.777 million, confirming its concerted efforts to prevent large-scale returning to poverty.
In summary, the No.1 central document of this year keeps focusing on building a strong nation of agriculture and highlights the full rural vitalization as the key to solve the “three rural issues,” but it also emphasizes learning from the experience of “Thousand Village Project,” concentrating all the efforts to accomplish practical things that can tangibly benefit the public. Persistent full rural vitalization will help exert the potential as a foundation for the three rural issues and ensure stable and healthy development economically and socially. However, after so many years, it reverts to Xi Jinping’s “Zhejiang experience” of 20 years ago and calls officials to implement “the 4 going down to grassroot” system to solve farmers' problems. This may show the complexity of the three rural issues, so it might as well just follow the trend for cult of personality. But if situation goes on like this, it would be hard to make decisive progress to achieve comprehensive rural vitalization by 2035, and to realize the modernization of agriculture and rural areas.
（Dr. Hsu Sheng-Tai, Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies）
（Translated to English by Tracy Chou）
