China’s unprecedented growth began with its Rural Reform of 1978. Agricultural development, rural areas, and farmers are known as the Three Rural Issues, or San Nong, that successive Chinese leaders have identified as fundamental to the country’s economic progress and people’s livelihoods.
In 2018, China launched a series of new reforms aimed at rural revitalization, setting goals on fostering agricultural development and modernization, reducing poverty, restoring the environment, and strengthening governance, to make rural areas vibrant and healthy places to live and work.
Meanwhile, China faces challenges at home and aboard: The global economic slowdown; uncertainty in ongoing trade negotiations with the United States; increased downward pressure of the domestic economy; and the African swine fever epidemic in many regions across the country.
On May 13, IFPRI and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) co-organized the inaugural China-Global Agricultural Policy Forum, which aims to facilitate policy dialogue and knowledge exchanges on agricultural development and policies, and shares evidence-based research findings to inform policymaking. During the event, IFPRI launched its 2019 Global Food Policy Report in China, and CAAS launched its 2019 China Agricultural Sector Development Report (CASDR), both focusing on the theme of rural revitalization. This is the second time that IFPRI and CAAS co-hosted the launch event for the two flagship reports.
“Successful implementation of the rural revitalization strategy needs to be backed by not only hard sciences, but also soft science,” said CAAS President Huajun Tang, noting that revitalizing rural areas is key to achieving food security, sustainable development, and poverty reduction. “Therefore, there is an urgent need to further study rural revitalization. We are glad that GFPR and CASDR are setting on the common footstone of this important subject, offering global and China’s experiences on rural revitalization, respectively. We hope to learn from each other and share successful experience with other countries.”
CAAS Vice President Xurong Mei provided an overview of the CASDR, which reviews a series of challenges and opportunities on China’s agricultural development. In 2017, Mei said, the added value of the agri-food system accounted for 23.3% of GDP and 36.07% of employment in China.
“Thriving agricultural sector and integration of first, second, and third industries [agriculture, manufacturing, and services] is critical to rural revitalization and economic development,” Mei said. “Agriculture continues to play the role of ‘ballast stone’ and ‘stabilizer’.” According to Mei, the Chinese government gives priority to raising farmers’ incomes to improve food security at the price of sacrificing some of its international competitiveness.
“I am glad that both reports are data-driven, evidence-based, and supported by reliable models,” IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan said. “We need more data and science to back all levels of policymaking.”
Rural areas around the world face a persistent crisis, Fan said, outlining the GFPR findings. In Africa and South Asia, 20%-30% of rural youth are unemployed, nearly 50% are underemployed, lacking the job opportunities to ensure food and nutrition security, raise living standards, or provide an education for their children. Environmental degradation, including land degradation, waste and water pollution, and biodiversity loss, is putting human and planetary health at risk.
“I grew up in a village in Jiangsu province, China,” Fan said. “The Rural Reform has tremendously improved livelihoods in my village—rural dwellers’ income has been increased by 50, even 100 times over 40 years. People moved into nice buildings, have access to electricity and mobile phones. However, overuse of fertilizer and rapid industry development added great pressure on the environment—ground and underground water is polluted, food safety at risk, and waste not disposed. To spur rural revitalization, we must protect environment and conserve already scarce resources. Otherwise, it is impossible to create healthy places that will retain youth population or attract talents in rural areas.”
Between 1978 and 2006, township and village enterprises helped to move 223 million people from farming to nonfarming activities in China, complemented by social safety nets and rural health services. Today, China’s new multidimensional rural revitalization strategy uses a rurbanomics (rural-urban) approach to modernize the farm sector and rural areas.
For example, “Taobao villages”—places across rural China that make products sold on the country’s largest e-commerce platform—are fostering entrepreneurship and create flexible, inclusive employment opportunities, Fan said: “E-commerce creates tremendous economic opportunities in China, by linking rural and urban markets and providing the connectivity for generating rural employment. In Africa, policymakers are keen to learn how to harness the power of e-commerce to create rural-based business, where the rural population continues to increase, and rural unemployment rates are staggeringly high.”
China’s rural revitalization strategy is not without its problems, according to Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Researcher Ling Zhu. For instance, a plan to improve rural sanitation by building modern public toilets—the so-called “toilet revolution”—has had management issues, with some facilities either out of service or too dirty to use shortly after they were built in the villages. Sometimes, flush toilets have been built in water-deficient areas. “Clean water and sanitation (SDG6) are basic human rights. But improvements such as the toilet revolution must be supported by appropriate institutions and coordinated policy actions,” Zhu said.
“What is the contribution of China’s agriculture sector to the national economy is a long-neglected topic. The CASDR thoroughly estimated agriculture’s contribution from a food systems aspect, and the result 23.3% tells us that agriculture is still the foundation of the economy and should be given the top priority,” said Jikun Huang, dean of Peking University’s New Rural Development Institute. “The GFPR has a great impact globally. As China has gained a lot of experience from the past 40 years of agricultural transformation, we hope future GFPR reports will be an important tool that shares China’s experience with other developing countries, especially countries in Africa South of the Sahara.”
“Due to resource endowment constrains, China’s current policy priorities intend to sacrifice agricultural competitiveness for farmers’ income. However, to improve agricultural productivity, we need to foster rural labor transfer. Subsidies and farm support are necessary at present but should not hinder labor transfer or be China’s long-term strategy,” said Funing Zhong, a professor at the Nanjing Agricultural University School of Economics and Management. “In addition, we urgently need to conduct studies on carbon emission reduction in agricultural production, to mitigate climate change and make room for carbon emissions in other sectors.”
The forum was moderated by Longjiang Yuan, director general of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development of CAAS, and IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Kevin Chen, head of the institute’s East and Central Asia Office. More than 300 participants, including policy makers, academia, representatives from embassies and international organizations, and the press attended the event.
Xinyuan Shang is an IFPRI Senior Communications Specialist.
