2nd LD-Writethru-China Focus: China holds key meeting to plan rural work for 2018

BEIJING, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese leaders convened a central rural work conference on Thursday to review the country's rural and agricultural work in 2017 and map out plans for 2018 and beyond.

The annual meeting is expected to make comprehensive arrangements for the country's rural vitalization, a strategy set at the 19th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress two months ago.

Despite sound progress in agricultural and rural work, China still faces a development gap between its urban and rural regions due to lack of quality and efficiency in agriculture and unsustained growth of farmers' income.

Issues related to agriculture, rural areas and rural people are fundamental to China, and the development of agriculture and rural areas must be prioritized, according to the report delivered at the CPC congress in late October.

Under the ongoing supply-side structural reform in the agricultural sector, the country's grain output increased to 617.9 million tonnes in 2017 as per unit yield improved, the second-highest output in history.

Official data showed the average per capita disposable income for rural residents reached 9,778 yuan (about 1,497 U.S. dollars) in the first three quarters of this year, a 7.5-percent year-on-year increase. In the meantime, the average per capita disposable income of urban residents was 27,430 yuan.

At the meeting, work is expected on plans to give priority to rural regions in resource allocation and public services to close the urban-rural gap by shoring up weak links such as infrastructure and information exchange, analysts said.

At the tone-setting Central Economic Work Conference last week, policymakers said scientific plans should be made in pursuing the rural vitalization strategy, and that agricultural policies should focus on improving quality.

The agricultural supply-side structural reform will be pushed forward, and reforms should be made in purchasing and storage of grain to make purchasing prices better reflect market demand, according to the economic work conference.

Facing an oversupply of corn and rising demand for soy and other grain varieties, the corn cultivation area shrank 3.6 percent, while that for beans increased 6.7 percent in 2017, official data showed.

Rural areas are also a major front for one of China's "three tough battles" for the next three years, namely preventing and defusing major risks, targeted poverty alleviation and tackling pollution.

"We must ensure that by the year 2020, all rural residents living below the current poverty line have been lifted out of poverty, and poverty is eliminated from all poor counties and regions," according to the report of the 19th CPC National Congress.

For the battle against poverty, policymakers pledged to work to ensure the quality of poverty reduction efforts, focus on helping special groups and eradicate abject poverty.

China has lifted more than 60 million people out of poverty in the past five years, with the poverty rate dropping from 10.2 percent to less than 4 percent. As of the end of 2016, there were 43.35 million Chinese living below the national poverty line.

The Chinese leadership has also stressed the significance of construction, maintenance and operation of rural roads in the country's battle against poverty to bring more people and wealth to poor regions.

In the past five years, China has seen 1.28 million km of rural roads built or renovated, with 99.24 percent of townships and 98.34 percent of villages connected by asphalt or cement roads. Enditem