“Three Rural" Issues

It is the abbreviation for “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues. “Agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues related to the overall picture of national development. China is a large agricultural country with a large agricultural population. Farmers have always been an important social class. Agriculture, rural areas, and farmers have always been the foundation and support of national stability, reform and development. The “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues are pivotal in the process of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and the fundamental issues related to the overall development of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Solving the “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues is a long-term and arduous task. Since the Reform and Opening-up, from 1982 to 1986 and from 2004 to 2016, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China successively issued 18 No. 1 documents focusing on the “agriculture, rural areas and farmers”. The Sixteenth CPC National Congress put forward the ambitious goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, requiring that in the first 20 years of the 21st century, we must concentrate our efforts on building a moderately prosperous society of a higher level that will benefit more than one billion people. To achieve this goal, the focus and difficulty lie in rural areas. In order to accelerate rural development, it is necessary to break the dual urban-rural system, establish a scientific outlook on development, and adhere to the overall development of urban and rural areas.

The Third Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee of the Party put forward the requirement of coordinating urban and rural development, and clearly came up with the important thesis of “two trends”, that is, in the initial stage of industrialization, agriculture supports industry and providing accumulation for industry was a universal trend. After industrialization reached certain state, it is also a general trend that industry feeds back agriculture and cities support the countryside to realize the coordinated development of industry and agriculture, and the coordinated development of cities and rural areas. As a whole, our country has now reached the stage of development in which industry promotes agriculture and cities lead the countryside. The Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward the strategic task of building a new socialist countryside, taking the path of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics as the basic direction, and accelerating the formation of a new pattern of urban-rural economic and social development as the fundamental requirement. Since the Eighteenth CPC National Congress, Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that making solving the “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues as the top priority of the Party's work must not be shaken, and that the Chinese people's food supply must be firmly held in their own hands. In the new era, to carry out in-depth and effective “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” policy, we must adhere to the vision of innovative, coordinated, green, open and inclusive development. We must focus on strengthening the supply-side structural reform of agriculture, improve the quality and efficiency of the agricultural supply system, and firmly establish the strong sense of shortcomings, adhere to problem orientation, and effectively lengthen the short legs of “synchronization of the four modernizations” in agriculture, and make up for the shortcomings of the moderately prosperous countryside. The report of the 19th CPC National Congress emphasized that the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers are fundamental issues related to the national economy and people’s livelihood, and the resolution of them must always be the top priority of the Party’s work. Further clarified the important position of the “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues in the development of our country in the new era.

The resolution of the “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues is to make the integrated urban and rural development as the fundamental requirement of building moderately prosperous society in all respects, to take improving rural people's livelihood as an important part of adjusting the national income distribution pattern, to take expanding rural demand as a key measure to stimulate domestic demand, and to make developing modern agriculture as a major task to transform the economic development mode, and to make the construction of a new socialist countryside and the promotion of urbanization as the lasting driving forces for maintaining stable and rapid economic development, so as to do a good job in “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” issues in accordance with the basic principles of stabilizing food supply, increasing income and benefiting people’s livelihood, promoting overall planning through reforms, and strengthening the base to increase stamina.