Make or break
Top leadership wants the rural economy to be a key driver of growth.
That's why rural development is back at the top of the agenda in the 2024 No. 1 Document – the annual rural policy guidance from the Party Central Committee and the State Council – which dropped on Saturday.
ICYDK: The Party's first policy document of the year has focused on agriculture, rural areas, and farmers for 21 years in a row to signal how highly they prioritize these issues.
- The 2022 and 2023 documents focused heavily on food security, giving only limited space to rural development.
But this year's doc is different:
- It opens with a call for officials to implement the lessons from a massive village renovation effort Xi Jinping launched in Zhejiang 20 years ago.
- Three-quarters of its to-dos are related to rural job creation, industrial development, infrastructure construction, and governance. By comparison, nearly half of last year's tasks were related to food security.
This year's doc gets really specific about where the money for rural development will come from, promising officials will:
- Prioritize and protect rural-related fiscal funds in government budgets
- Support and standardize local government special-purpose bonds (SPBs) for major rural construction projects
- Provide targeted support for banks and insurers to fund rural projects
The bottom line: Growing rural industry and raising the incomes of the nearly 480 million folks still living in rural China is make or break for Beijing.
- Expect loads more investment in job-creating, consumption-boosting rural development initiatives this year.