V.   Promoting integration of urban and rural economic and social development

22. Speeding up the development of rural social programs

Stable input guarantee systems for rural culture will be established and to form as quickly as possible complete rural public cultural service system. Key people-benefiting cultural programs should be promoted, such as broadcast and television outreaching villages, sharing of cultural information resources, the construction of township comprehensive cultural stations and village cultural rooms, film projection in rural areas and farmer libraries. The results of universal compulsory education in rural areas should be consolidated. The subsidy standards for public funds of the rural schools and for boarding students with household economic difficulties will be uplifted, the treatment of rural teachers will be improved. Safety inspection, consolidation and renovation of middle and primary school premises in rural areas will be carried forward. Vocational education in rural areas should be accelerated. Starting from 2009, students of vocational schools with household economic difficulties in rural areas and students majoring in agriculture related disciplines will have fees waived. The incremental student subsidies of the state will be tilted to the students from rural areas. New type of rural cooperative medical care will be consolidated and developed. Guarantee for hospitalization of serious sickness will be the mainstay while giving consideration to the clinic medical care guarantee. Trials of pooling funds to cover clinic costs will be carried out, localities with appropriate conditions can uplift the financial subsidy standard and level. Input will be further increased to strengthen the construction of county, township and village medical care public service system. We should seize time tightly to formulate guiding opinions on new type of rural social pension insurance system in which individual pays, the collective supports and the government subsidizes. The central and provincial government will increase the subsidy to the rural minimum living guarantee and uplift rural minimum living guarantee standard and subsidy level. Social security issues of employees of the land reclamation system should be studied soonest.

23. Accelerating rural infrastructure facility construction

Rural safe drinking water project construction plan will be adjusted, investment and construction will be intensified, and rural schools and state-owned farms (forest farms) will be incorporated in the scope of construction. The coverage of power supply by power grids will be expanded and implementation of the same price from the same grid to rural and urban areas should be accelerated. Input in rural hydropower construction will be increased and construction scale of small hydropower to substitute fuel should be expanded. Rural road construction will be speeded up, all townships in the country and administrative villages in the eastern and central parts of the country with appropriate conditions with be connected by asphalt (cement) road by the end of 2010, administrative villages in the western regions with appropriate conditions will be connected with road, the central government finance will increase investment in rural road construction in the central and western areas, policy subsidy system to rural passenger transportation will be established. Investment in rural biogas construction will be increased, and trial and demonstration of crop stalk gasification will be expanded. Rural information works should be developed. Renovation of shabby temporary shelters of the state-owned forest farms and land reclamation areas will be increased, settlement programs of pastoral herders will be implemented and the trial of renovation of dilapidated premises of the rural areas will be expanded.

24. Actively expanding employment of rural laborers

Localities and relevant departments should attach great attention to the problems of employment difficulties and lowered wage of farmer migrant workers at the present and adopt forceful measures to help settle down farmer migrant workers to the maximum extent possible and make efforts to increase the income of labor of farmer migrant workers. Enterprises should be guided to fulfill social obligations and we will support enterprises to keep farmer migrant workers as much as possible, urge enterprises to timely pay wages in full and appropriately handle labor and wage disputes. Enterprises facing temporary difficulties in production and operation, we should guide them to adopt multiple measures such as flexible labor use and flexible hours and on-job training to stabilize employment. Urban and rural infrastructure facility construction and incremental public goods employment opportunities will be given to farmer migrant workers as much as possible. The method of food for work will be adopted to guide farmers to participate in the construction of agriculture and rural infrastructure facilities. Governments at both the origin of labor and recipient region of labor and enterprises should increase input, large-scale targeted and practical skill training of farmer migrant workers will be delivered. Localities with appropriate conditions can incorporate laid-off farmer migrant workers in the scope of relevant policy support. Policies of supporting farmer migrant workers to initiate their businesses at home should be implemented and such support should be reflected in loans, reduction and exemption of tax and fees, industry and commercial registration and information consultation. The legal land contracting rights of the farmer migrant workers returned home must be guaranteed, farmer migrant workers returned home but without any source of living will be provided with temporary relief or incorporated in the rural minimum guarantee. At the same time, the potential of employment within agricultural sector should be full explored to broaden off-farm employment in rural areas and farmers should be encouraged to start their owe business in local areas. We will seize time tightly to formulate the pension insurance method suitable to the characteristics of farmer migrant workers and the problem of transfer, acceptance and continuation of pension insurance relations cross social security regions of pooled retirement pension should be resolved. Statistical monitoring systems of farmer migrant workers should be established.

25. Promoting rural integrated reform

Following the requirements of forcefully strengthening social management and public service functions and accomplishing reform by 2012, township institutional reform will be continued. Reform of “township finance managed by county” will be promoted, county and township should strengthen supervision of agriculture related funds. Efforts will be made to gradually establish fund guarantee systems for the operation of village organizations, with stable fund sources, standardized management and forceful guarantees. Experiences of trials should be summarized, relevant policies should be improved, the case-by-case financial award and subsidy trail scope of rural public undertaking will be extended, central and the provincial financing should increase input into trials. We should actively and soundly dissolve township and village debts, by the 2010 we will basically complete eliminate the debts of rural compulsory education nationwide, and will continue to select trials of dissolving township and village debts formed whilst constructing rural public undertakings directly related to the interest of farmers.

26. Increasing the development momentum of county economies

Financial revenue distribution pattern will be adjusted, general transfer payments to county and township budgets will be increased, the proportion of county budget in the financial resources distribution below provincial level should be increased and the exploration will be implemented for the establishment of basic financial resource guarantee system for county and township budgets. Reform of provinces directly managing county (municipal) budgets will be pushed forward, big grain, oil-bearing, cotton and pig production counties will all be included in the reform. Trial reform of expanding the power of counties to boost development will be steadily implemented, provinces with appropriate conditions should be encouraged to ahead of others reduce administrative levels and explore by law the system that the province directly administers counties (municipals). Small towns with rapid economic development and strong capacity of absorbing population will be granted by law the administrative management rights in terms of investment approval, industry and commerce administration and public security. The development of township enterprises will be supported, input in technological renovation will be increased and industrial grouping and upgrading should be promoted.

27. Actively exploring rural markets

We will support the cooperation of distribution and production enterprises to establish regional rural commodity procurement alliances, using modern distribution methods to build and transform the distribution network for daily consumables of rural areas, the coverage of “farmer household shops” should be expanded, priority will be given to improving distribution rate and unified account settlement to better rural consumption environment. Design and development of daily consumables and construction materials suitable to rural characteristics should be encouraged. In 2009, “sending household electric appliances to rural areas” will be implemented nationwide, farmers who buy designated household electric appliances such as color TV, refrigerator, mobile phone and washing machine will be given direct subsidy by the state according to the certain proportion of product sales price, and products to be subsidized will be increased according to actual needs.  The quality of household electric appliances must be ensured and post-sales services must be well performed. Regulation of production and marketing of agricultural production materials will be strengthened, fertilizer production will be supported, off-season reserve will be increased to ensure market supply. We will support supply and marketing cooperatives, post offices and commercial and trade enterprises and farmer specialized cooperatives to accelerate development of chain operations of agricultural production materials, and sale of agricultural production materials based on credit will be promoted. Localities with appropriate conditions should be encouraged to build rural comprehensive service centers.  Supervision of rural market should be enhanced and behaviors of cheating and damaging the interest of farmers should be seriously dealt with.

28. Improving national poverty reduction strategy and policy system

The principle of poverty reduction through development will be upheld, methods of effectively integrating rural minimum living guarantee system and poverty reduction and development should be formulated. New poverty reduction standards will be implemented, poverty reduction policies will implemented in overall manner to the poverty population whose food and clothing problems have been resolved and to the low income population, efforts will be made to resolve food and clothing problems and to realize shake-off poverty for prosperity, the focus will be placed on the improvement of the self-development capacity of rural poverty population. We will continue to increase fund input in poverty reduction, to strengthen village-wide poverty reduction approach, upgrade the quality of labor transfer training and uplift the level of poverty reduction through industrialization. Priority support will be given to poverty reduction and development of old revolutionary bases, ethnic minority areas and frontier areas. We will actively and steadily implement poverty reduction through resettlement, integrated improvement of special types of poverty-stricken areas will be carried out. The role of sectors in poverty reduction should be fully tapped and we will continue to mobilize all walks of life to participate in poverty reduction and actively carry out international cooperation in combating poverty.

Party committees and governments at all levels should uphold that well resolving issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers is the top priority of the entire Party and the entire work of the government. The leadership of the Party in rural works should be truly strengthened and improved to ensure that various rural polices of the Party will be implemented on the ground. In-depth studying and practicing scientific development outlook should be firmly carried out in rural grassroots, following the requirements of scientific development outlook and righteous political achievement concept, we will take grain production, farmers’ income growth, arable land protection, environment improvement and harmony and stability as the important contents for evaluating performance of local particularly county (municipal) leadership, indicators should be formulated as soon as possible for strict supervision and inspection. The construction of village organization with the village Party organization as the core should be well carried out, activities of “sanjilianchuan[1]” in rural areas will be deepened, the setup method of rural Party organization will be innovated, the organization and work coverage of the Party in rural areas will be expanded.  Party member dynamic management system unifying urban and rural areas will be established and improved to strengthen education and management of farmer migrant Party members. Activities for striving for the best will be extensively carried out. Activity carrier of Party member position responsibilities and commitment to the position should be improved. Construction of Party working style and clean governance in rural areas will be strengthened, supervision and inspection of the implementation of rural policies of the Party will be well performed, outstanding problems damaging the interest of farmers will be seriously dealt with. The system and method of two-nomination and one election of village Party organization and direct election villagers’ committee will be improved, the source of rural cadres should be broadened, meanwhile, we will steadily push forward the graduates of colleges and universities to assume positions in rural areas and implement the plan that one village will have one graduate, its corresponding lasting mechanism and policy measures will be improved. The mechanism for nurturing, selection and promotion will be innovated, village Party branch secretary should be the best and strongest in the village. Following the requirements of setting responsibility targets, reasonable treatment with the work delivered, good performance leading to bright perspectives and certain guarantee after leaving the position, the basic remuneration of the village cadres will be set at no less than the average income of local rural laborers, in line with the actual situation and the performance, evaluation and award system will be setup. The problem of pension of village cadres will be gradually resolved. Efforts will be made to select the outstanding village cadres to positions of township leadership, township civil servants and the township public service units. Construction of modern distance education for rural Party members and premises for village organization activities will be actively promoted. Construction of Rural democracy and ruling by law and spiritual civilization will be strengthened, transparency of political affairs, village affairs and Party affairs will be promoted. We will attach the greatest attention to rural social stability, well handle outstanding contradiction and problems triggered by land acquisition, environment pollution, resettlement and disposal of collective assets in rural areas, meanwhile, complaints through correspondence will be well handled. Integrated improvement of rural public security will be carried out, construction of rural policy will be promoted. We will opposite and stop activities that use religion and kinship power to interfere rural public affairs, tightly prevent the penetration of hostile forces outside the country in rural areas and maintain rural social harmony and stability.

Good performance of agricultural and rural works in 2009 is of significant importance. We will closely unite with the Party Central Committee headed by general secretary Hu Jintao to forge ahead with solid works, carry forward in the face of difficulties to open up a new situation of rural reform and development.