China to modernize agriculture sector

Beijing(China)—The Chinese government is determined to modernize the agricultural industry and will invest more money in the country’s vast rural areas.
Addressing the annual central rural work conference which closed in Beijing Saturday, Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said that the agricultural industry and the rural areas had continued to develop in 2006 despite a series of natural disasters and increasingly fierce trade competition.
Sources at the meeting said that agricultural reform should be pursued, policies in favor of farmers strengthened and public services in rural areas improved.
“However, there are still a whole raft of very complex and challenging issues concerning farmers, rural areas and the agricultural industry as a whole,” Hui said.
Greater efforts will be made to improve land productivity, the efficiency with which resources are utilized and technological capacity in the industry.
To ensure basic medical services for farmers, the new cooperative medical care system will be expanded to cover 80 percent of China’s rural areas next year, according to the meeting.
At present, 40 percent of rural areas, or 200 million farmers, are covered by the cooperative medical care system to which farmers, local government and central government all contribute.
148 million elementary and primary students in rural areas will be exempted from tuition fees starting from 2007 and a new compulsory educational financing system will be established.
In 2006, 50 million elementary and primary students in western China’s rural areas were exempted from all educational charges except textbook fees.
The government will also press ahead with a national social security system in both urban and rural areas.
People's Daily Adds: The People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, is to carry an editorial on Sunday calling for efforts to modernize the agricultural industry in an active way.
The editorial coincides with the closing of China's annual central rural work conference, which maps out the country's strategies and policies for agricultural and rural development in 2007.
The editorial says the the agricultural industry and the rural areas had continued to develop in 2006 despite a series of natural disasters, which provided strong supports for the economic and social development of the country.
However, the basis for the agricultural industry is still weak with laggard technological level and deficient employment channels for farmers. imbalance development in the urban and rural areas still exists and income gap is enlarging.
As the development of the agricultural industry and the rural area is still in difficulty, finding solutions to issues concerning farmers, rural areas and the agricultural industry should be put on the top agenda of the Communist Party of China to promote the stable development of the agricultural industry and sustainable increase in farmers' income.
Modernizing the agricultural industry to promote the transformation of the growth mode is an active response to the bottleneck of natural resources and environment that is threatening China's development.
To solve problems in the depth of the agricultural industry such as safeguarding food security, increasing farmers' income, dealing with international competition, promoting industrialization and urbanization all require to develop modern agriculture
Modernizing the agricultural industry requires increasing investment in the industry and the rural area by a large margin, enhancing technological and personnel supports, improving industrial and market systems and establishing innovation system as well as other system guarantees.
It is prolonged and arduous to modernize the agricultural industry, which will run through the whole process of building a new rural area and agricultural modernization. It is to develop agricultural productivity, to transform growth mode of the agricultural industry, and to develop the agricultural industry in a rapid and good way.
The realization of the modernization of the agricultural lies in immediately handling the issues benefiting farmers, it stresses.

—The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item