Rural vitalization is integral to high-quality development

The policy blueprint recently unveiled by the central authorities for agricultural and rural development is expected to give a shot in the arm to China's bid to promote all-round rural vitalization.

The "No 1 Central Document" for 2025, released on Sunday, lists efforts to deepen rural reform and promote all-round rural vitalization from multiple aspects, including enhancing the ability to safeguard the supply of agricultural products such as grain, consolidating the fruits of poverty alleviation, promoting rural construction, improving the rural governance system, and optimizing the allocation mechanism.

Given that this is the concluding year of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and the last year of the five-year transition period linking the consolidation and expansion of the fruits of poverty alleviation and rural vitalization, how to make efforts to promote all-round rural vitalization has become a focus of social attention. As the first policy statement released by the central authorities each year to show China's policy priorities, the "No 1 Central Document" marks the 13th of its kind since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, demonstrating the importance attached by the top leadership to agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

As China is a large developing country with more than 1.4 billion people, ensuring the Chinese people's rice bowls are held firmly in their own hands with a steady grain harvest has always been the central authorities' priority. With reform and opening-up, as well as scientific and technological innovation as driving forces, the country will improve the basic rural management system to safeguard grain security, and ensure that no large-scale lapsing or relapsing into poverty occurs, the document says.

Even if China's grain output exceeded 1.4 trillion jin (706.50 million metric tons) in 2024 for the first time, the country still needs to improve production efficiency through the use of superior grain varieties and agricultural technology.

An important way to test the effectiveness of the rural vitalization policies is to see whether rural areas are becoming developed and whether farmers are becoming richer.

Without the modernization of rural areas, there is no Chinese modernization, and without an increase in farmers' incomes, there is no common prosperity. This explains why the document says the country will do everything possible to increase the efficiency of agriculture, boost the vitality of rural areas, and increase farmers' incomes, to provide basic support for promoting Chinese modernization.