Our efforts to build a new countryside should benefit the rural population. We will give high priority to building roads and water facilities. This year, we will ensure that 60 million more rural residents gain access to safe drinking water; that 200,000 kilometers of rural roads are built or upgraded; and that bridges are built to replace all ropeways in the western region. We will work toward providing electricity to the over 200,000 remaining people in China who are still without access.

We will strengthen efforts to improve the environment, focusing particularly on refuse and sewage treatment, to build a more beautiful and livable countryside. We will increase rural incomes through multiple channels and keep narrowing the urban-rural income gap.

We will continue to fight the battle against poverty, carry out extensive poverty alleviation and development programs in contiguous poor areas, and take targeted measures to help people lift themselves out of poverty. Regardless of how difficult it may be, this year, we must again reduce the poor rural population by more than 10 million.

Reform is key to modernizing agriculture. On the premise of keeping household operations stable, we will support the development of large family farming businesses, family farms and pastures, farmers’ cooperatives, leading agricultural enterprises, and other emerging agribusinesses; cultivate a new type of skilled farmer; and develop diversified and scaled agricultural operations.

We will ensure smooth progress in determining, registering, and certifying contracted rural land-use rights. We will move prudently to carry out pilot reforms relating to rural land requisition, putting rural collective land designated for business-related construction on the market, the system of land use for rural housing, and the rural collective property rights system. We need to ensure that during reform, the acreage of cultivated land does not diminish, its quality does not deteriorate, and the interests of people in rural areas are protected.

We will deepen the reform of rural supply and marketing cooperatives, state farms on reclaimed land, the seed industry, state forestry farms, and state forests, and work to ensure the success of both experimental zones for carrying out rural reform and modern agriculture demonstration zones. We will refine the policy on setting minimum state grain purchase prices and the policy on the temporary state purchase and storage of major agricultural products, and improve the ways that subsidies are granted under the system of guaranteed base prices for agricultural products. We will strengthen the integration and management of funds for agricultural development. Whatever fiscal difficulties we may face, our policies to support agriculture must be strengthened, and related funding must be increased.