The Communist Party of China (CPC) vowed on Sunday to improve its leadership in the country's vast rural area to carry out smooth reform and boost development in the region.

Efforts were needed to constantly improve the CPC's leadership in dealing with agriculture work, according to a landmark policy document published by the CPC Central Committee.

Party building in the countryside should be driven forward in an all-round manner and in the spirit of reform and innovation, according to the Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Advancement of Rural Reform and Development, which was approved by the CPC Central Committee on October 12 at a plenary session.

CPC committees and government at various levels should give agriculture work an important place in their work agenda and provide classified guidance based on different localities, according to the full text of the document.

Party and government chief leaders must personally attend to agriculture work and CPC committees at the city and county levels must put agriculture as the focus of their work, it emphasized.

"Grain production, farmers' income increase, farmland protection, environment protection, and regional stability would all be evaluated when assessing performance of local leadership."

The paper urged efforts to build CPC committees into a strong leading core with responsibilities including pushing forward scientific development in the countryside, leading the farmers to become better off, forging close ties with the masses and safeguarding stability in the rural area.

It called for efforts to promote the establishment of Party organizations in rural communities, farmers' specialized co-operatives, associations and industry chains.

The CPC Central Committee also championed the importance of CPC work among the country's huge migrant population and pledged to build sites for dealing with Party work in all villages within two years.

More channels should be opened to select leaders in the countryside, said the paper, adding rich farmers, retired officers and returned migrant workers and college students should all be candidates for village leaders.

Efforts should be made to select more village leaders into township leadership or become civil servants in township government departments, it noted.

More needed to be done to resolve village leaders actual difficulties, the paper stressed, adding facilities would be available for village CPC members and leaders to receive modern distance education within two years.

The management of migrant CPC members should be enhanced and improved, and more outstanding young farmers would be recruited into the Party, it said.

Punishment of corrupt officials and the prevention of corruption were also highlighted in the paper.

A system that involves education, policy-making, monitoring, reform, malpractice rectification and punishment would be in place to help build the anti-corruption system in the rural area, it said.

To safeguard the farmers' interests, monitoring measures would be carried out to check the implementation of agricultural policies in the countryside, it noted.

Malpractice that had violated farmers' interests would be corrected and severely punished, it said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2008)