ABUNDANT HARVEST: Farmers in Tongyi Village of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region harvest rice using modern machinery. The overall harvest for 2009 is expected to be one of the largest in Chinese history (WANG PENG)

Top Chinese leaders spent the first day of 2010 bringing attention to the government's commitment to spurring development in rural areas. Chinese President Hu Jintao visited villages in Hebei Province on January 1, talking to grassroots officials and informing local farmers that the Central Government will provide a more generous financial package to boost their incomes.

Premier Wen Jiabao was also on a rural investigative trip in northeast Heilongjiang Province.

The top leaders' excursions were follow-ups to the annual central conference on rural work held in Beijing on December 27-28. The conference sets the tone for the next year's agricultural and rural development.

The president and premier's schedules exemplify the importance the government has attached to farmers, agriculture and rural construction.

Wen told farmers in Shengli Village the government will strive to narrow the rural-urban income gap by increasing the salary package for migrant workers—leave their hometown to seek employment in urban areas—and improving the standard of living for farmers.

The agriculture industry reaped a bountiful harvest in 2009, according to information delivered at the conference. Total grain output for 2009 was expected to reach 530.8 million tons, up 0.44 percent from 2008 figures, making it the largest in Chinese history and marking the sixth year of positive harvest growth. The average net income of farmers in 2009 totaled 5,000 yuan ($732), growing 6 percent year on year and greatly overshadowing the 1978 average of only 134 yuan ($19.6).

Despite the hikes, the income growth rate still falls short of the 8-9 percent growth rate of the GDP, leaving officials at the conference to admit that much still needs to be done to bridge the income gap between rural and urban residents.

Following Hu and Wen's trip to the rural areas, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council soon released the No. 1 Document in 2010, which focused on the overall rural issue. The release is the seventh time the CPC Central Committee has dedicated its first document of the year to an agriculture-related matter.

The Central Government is also investigating the feasibility of the country's first grain and food act to strengthen the agriculture industry. Officials at the State Administration of Grain said the draft act would be completed sometime in the first half of this year.

The wave of positive signals from the conference and government have triggered a rally among agriculture-related company shares in the domestic stock markets. Share prices of Huaying Agriculture Development Co. Ltd. and Yuan Longping Hi-Tech Agriculture Co. Ltd. rose over 6 percent in the four days following the announcement of the supportive actions.

For the farmers

Rural residents represent a major demographic in the China's population—over 800 million of China's 1.3 billion people are farmers.

Starting in 2008, the Central Government lifted the minimum purchasing prices for soybean, wheat and rice to increase farmers' incomes, said Zhang Hongyu, Director General of Policy and the Law Department of the Ministry of Agriculture.

To relieve the burden on farming families, the State Council approved policies exempting rural students from paying first semester tuition fees for vocational schools. The policy takes effect this year.

Migrant workers, a demographic that amounts to 260 million people and is on the rise, also fall under the recent blanket of government efforts to promote rural development. By the end of 2009, the Ministry of Finance, together with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security had appropriated more than 23.2 billion yuan ($3.4 billion) for local governments to stimulate employment opportunities for migrant workers.

On December 30, 2009, the State Council also established new pension fund rules allowing migrant workers to transfer their pensions across provinces. Each year before the Spring Festival, which usually falls in late January or early February, migrant workers tend to cancel their pension plans to get insurance money back, since pension funds could not be transferred freely among provinces.

Existing problems

The agriculture industry has long been considered the foundation of Chinese economic development, but against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, as well as the increasing speed of globalization and urbanization, the development encountered new problems in 2009. The pressures are likely to continue well into 2010, according to Zhao Tao, Secretary General of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, in Outlook, a weekly magazine published by Xinhua News Agency, on January 4.