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Rural China on Beijing Review
Special> The Third Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee> Rural China on Beijing Review
UPDATED: March 5, 2007 NO.10 MAR.8, 2007
Good Country Living
Construction of a new countryside has brought about changes to some rural areas, but plenty of challenges remain
By LAN XINZHEN
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According to Ye, a shortage of funds is the biggest difficulty to most farmers.

"In agricultural production, 66.5 percent of rural households are short of funds and in bad need of help, and 29.7 percent of them hope the government can give credit support for production," said Ye in his report.

Meanwhile, credit needs for farmers' lives are even higher than that for production, including education, health care and house building.

In Ye's opinion, in some rural areas, the construction that is being undertaken is not what farmers desire.

For example, in some places, villages are decorated with lights and greened, roads are covered with cement and houses are whitewashed. However, farmers deem that the most urgent thing is to upgrade garbage disposal and rebuild kitchens, livestock pens and toilets.

This coincides with worries of scholars. Last year when the policy of building a new countryside was first initiated, some scholars and media feared that that it could lead removing old villages to construct new ones with taller buildings. According to Ye's report, perhaps because of this worry, of the 6 million villages all over the country, less than 6,000 really began new construction.

Convincing farmers of the desirability of certain changes is also a challenge.

"For instance, in order to protect water resources and promote ecological balance, it is ideal to pave roads with sandstone instead of cement, but farmers prefer cement instead of sandstone for the convenience of driving. We also suggest building sewage disposal facilities to protect drinking water and maintain soil health, but farmers believe sewage can naturally seep," Ye said.

More measures

On February 25, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) approved establishment of five new rural banking financial institutions in the provinces of Sichuan, Jilin and Qinghai.

This is a new rural financial pattern adopted by the Chinese Government to solve difficulties of financing in rural areas. On December 20, 2006, the CBRC released a circular encouraging various types of capital to set up rural banks and decided to carry out experimentation in Sichuan and four other provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Establishment of rural banks can meet the growing demand of financial services in rural areas and solve the financing difficulty of farmers step by step.

The No. 1 Document issued early this year stipulates that comprehensive rural reform involves reform not only in the economic field, but also in political, social and cultural spheres. It is a significant institutional innovation and social transformation.

Moreover, a decision was made at the Central Rural Work Conference to exempt tuition and miscellaneous fees for primary and junior middle school students in rural areas. This will mean 148 million rural students can enjoy free nine-year education. In 2007, a new rural cooperative medicare system will be spread to more than 80 percent of the country's counties and districts to relieve the problem of difficult access to hospital services and expensive medicine that have bothered farmers for years.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) decided that increased budgetary expenditure in education, health care and culture and fixed asset investment should be mainly put into rural areas, and more land transfer revenues of the government should be used in rural areas. The MOF is working on establishing a mechanism to secure a steady increase of input in agriculture and rural areas. It will also readjust structures of budgetary expenditures, fixed asset investment and credit supply. The growth of budgetary expenditure in agriculture by both central and local governments should be higher than that of their current fiscal revenues so that adequate funds can be put into construction of a new countryside.

"In 2007, the growth of budgetary expenditure in rural areas will continue to exceed that of the previous year," said Jin Renqing, Minister of Finance.

According to Chen, in order to develop modern agriculture, the government will strengthen establishment of an agricultural science and technology innovation system.  

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