Download No. 1 Central Document 2015

No. 1 Central Document 2015
Suggestions on Reinforcing Reform and Innovation to Accelerate Agricultural
Modernization
The long expected No. 1 Central Document, officially titled “The Central
Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council
Suggestions on Reinforcing Reform and Innovation to Accelerate Agricultural
Modernization”, was published on 1 February 2015.
This policy document is issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of China and the State Council every year and has been dubbed the “No. 1 Central
Document”. This is the 12th consecutive year in which the document focused on
agricultural and rural development issues.
The concept of agricultural modernization, together with industrial, defense and
science & technology modernization was firstly raised during the first National
People’s Congress in 1954. Yet, agricultural modernization is still very much
lagging behind China’s industrial modernization. The Document this year aims to
provide policy suggestions on how to reinforce the fundamental role of
agriculture and increase farmers’ income while the overall economic growth is
slowing down, the exhaustion of agricultural resources is accelerating and the
pollution of farmlands is deteriorating.
The publication of this year occurred later than expected. This is partly due to the
new practice of circulating the draft among local governments and local
agricultural commissions before its official publication.
The beginning of the 2015 Document lists one of the most prominent
achievements in agriculture in 2014 – the grain output has increased for 11 years
consecutively, a striking index to preliminarily judge the agricultural
achievement, matching the importance of the GDP index to measure China's
overall economic growth.
The 2015 document contains a strong element of food safety pursuing a new
direction initiated last year: From the very beginning of the new governmental
team, Prime Minister Li Keqiang identified food safety as a major priority. This
was confirmed at the end of January 2015 when Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli
addressed the State Council and declared that supervision of food safety will
become tougher and punishment exemplary so that "food manufacturers will not,
cannot and dare not break the law".
The 2015 Document is structured into 5 parts, which includes 32 suggestions in
total. The first 3 parts can be summarized by three perspectives: agriculture
shall be strong; farmers shall be rich; the countryside shall be beautiful. To
achieve these objectives, the last 2 parts propose concrete solutions aiming at
deepening agricultural reform （Part 4）and – very much in line with general
policy developments - reinforcing the construction of the socialist legal system in
rural areas (Part 5).
Part 1 starts with a concise and programmatic sentence: “If China wants to be
strong, its agriculture must be strong.” The suggestions made in this part are
more direct and concrete than last year. It mentioned, for the first time, the
implementation of “the overall planning of national high-standard farmlands”,
the construction of “modern irrigation areas”, “reclamation of saline-alkali
farmlands”, to“develop grass and husbandry industry, “coordinated development
of grain, commodity crop, and composite feed”, “construction of whole-process
traceability and info-sharing platform of quality and safety of the agricultural
products”. Interesting is the inclusion of the food safety element of 'traceability'
in this chapter. And indeed, a nationwide initiative to implement this important
element in the food chain would be a decisive asset.
By far the longest of the Document, this initial part emphasizes the importance of
“food security” as the uncontested primary policy goal in China's agricultural
world. Surprisingly however the wording “food security” is not mentioned in
this Part, as in the whole Document. The mastermind behind the document, Mr.
CHEN Xiwen, Director at the Central Agricultural Leadership Taskforce of the
State Council, pointed out in that to “accelerate the transformation of the mode of
agricultural development” is the most striking originality of this year.
Part 2 opens with the notion “If China wants to be rich, its farmers must be
rich.” A distinction between a 'primary (agricultural commodities), secondary
(agricultural transformation), and service industry (machinery, diverse support)
in rural areas' is introduced by the Document. This part provides for a key
solution to increase the farmers’ income, consisting in extending the industrial
chain of agricultural products in order to gain added value.
On land reforms, aimed at allowing farmers to trade their land to alleviate
poverty and create bigger and more efficient farms, the document puts the focus
on expanding an experiment that registers land usage rights to cover entire
provinces. Chinese farmers typically hold long-term land use contracts allocated
by the government, which allow them to farm the land but not sell it. In the past
years, China has been struggling to squeeze as much food out of its dwindling,
contaminated land as possible as demand increases from ever-expanding urban
regions.
Part 3 stipulates that “If China wants to be beautiful, its countryside must be
beautiful.” It continues to emphasize the importance of infrastructure in the
countryside, particularly on the improvement of the quality of drinking water in
rural areas. Very much in tradition with hitherto practice it encourages building
of a “pilot beautiful countryside”, raising the new concept of “village renovation”
and to avoid damaging demolishing actions on old villages. Attempts to clean up
land that has been damaged by heavy metal mining and processing will be
widened this year, and "permanent farmland" that is off-limit to industrial and
urban development will be created, the document states.
According to the Document, more infrastructures need to be built in rural areas,
including laying water pipes, upgrading existing power grids, or constructing
networks for alternative energy such as hydro and solar power.
In Part 4, the Document underlines that agricultural reform play a pivotal role in
the process of the comprehensive reform. The most striking new measure
introduced in the agricultural reform is to guide farmers to use land management
rights to buy equities in cooperatives and in leading enterprises. “Encouraging
family farming at appropriate scale” is included in the Document for the first
time to respond to the UN’s “International Year of Family Farming” initiative in
2014. The financial system in rural areas is bound to be further liberalized as the
Document stresses that “agriculture related enterprises could issue bonds” to
raise fund. Banks are encouraged to provide funding to farmers to narrow the
wealth gap between rural and urban areas. Private investment in farms is
encouraged, and authorities will experiment with ways to provide cheaper
financing options to more farmers. In more concrete terms, the China
Development Bank will have to increase mid- and long-term infrastructure loans
to rural areas and the Postal Savings Bank of China, which serves low-income
entrepreneurs, will be encouraged to expand in villages.
Finally, in Part 5, the Document concedes that the implementation of the legal
framework in rural areas is still rather weak. The further build on the socialist
countryside in line with the general party principles to establish the 'rule of law',
the Document calls for improvement of the protection for property rights and
enhancement of the legislative work in rural areas.
Markus KLINGLER / Jerome LEPEINTRE
Beijing, 2 February 2015