China is a large agricultural country with approximately 140 million hectares of cultivated area. With merely seven percent of the world’s arable land, it feeds nearly one fifth of the world’s population.

Thanks to the hard work of its government, China has fundamentally eliminated absolute poverty in 2020. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that the per capita disposable income of rural residents reached RMB 17,100 last year, achieving a substantial increase over a few years. Nevertheless, there is still a big gap between the rural areas and cities in terms of infrastructure, public services, and culture.

As China enters a new stage of development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), priority of the work pertaining to agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents is undergoing a historic shift, from pooling resources to support poverty alleviation to comprehensively advancing rural revitalization.

The resolution of issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people and rural revitalization are now the top priority of China’s development. The goal is to continue narrowing the development gap between urban and rural areas and allow low-income populations and underdeveloped areas to share the fruits of development.

Like the economic development model, rural revitalization is not pursued by a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, different regions follow their own paths in terms of industrial development, ecological protection, and cultural inheritance according to their own regional characteristics and resource endowments. In face of great difficulties, China is picking up the pace of agricultural and rural modernization and rural revitalization by improving relevant policies and systems, introducing effective measures, and rallying social forces, so as to have high-quality and efficient agriculture, livable and business-friendly rural areas, and affluent farmers.