Interpreting the 2020 Central Document No. 1
On January 2, 2020, the Central Committee released the 2020 Document No. 1, “Opinions on Focusing on Key Tasks in the ‘Three Rural’ Areas to Ensure the Realization of a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects on Schedule.” Some key points in the document are worth noting.
Policy focuses on implementation, and accountability procedures are starting: Two sentences in the document are particularly important: “The practice of agricultural and rural reform and development proves that the principles and policies formulated by the Party Central Committee are completely correct and must continue to be implemented in the coming period.” and “Make the implementation of the ‘Three Rural’ policies since the 19th National Congress of the Party an important part of the central inspection.” The former defines the nature of past policies, and the latter serves as a warning against inaction, where “documents are issued every year but never implemented.”
Poverty alleviation and achieving a moderately prosperous society for rural residents is the top priority: Xiong Jie, a professor of political science at New York University, believes that China has created a world miracle by lifting more than 700 million people out of poverty. How to achieve poverty alleviation without relapse is the focus of rural work and the hard-core script for telling China’s story well to the world. The opinions provide a detailed plan on how to achieve comprehensive poverty alleviation, how to prevent relapse, how to tell the vivid story of China’s poverty reduction to the world, how to adjust the poverty alleviation work style from concentrated campaigns to regular promotion, and how to solve relative poverty. The next step is to see how it is implemented.
Complementing rural infrastructure, driving investment: After the transformation of urban villages, rural infrastructure has become an important pole for driving investment. In the next few years, upgrading rural roads, electricity, internet, water, and toilets will be important means to stimulate investment. In particular, rural water supply and toilet renovation are of great significance and have great potential for improvement. It is worth mentioning that the document specifically mentions “strengthening rural road traffic safety management.”
Improving the quality of public services and narrowing the urban-rural gap: Judging from the college entrance examination and the actual situation of rural education in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for rural children to get into first-class universities. First, rural and urban areas are two completely parallel worlds. College entrance examination questions based on urban standards are not conducive to rural children. I remember a question in the 2017 college entrance examination Chinese test about “shared bicycles.” The sharing economy was very hot that year, but rural areas had not seen shared bicycles. If a rural child wrote about “shared bicycles” based on imagination, the consequences would be unimaginable. Second, there are fewer and fewer excellent teachers in rural areas, and the quality of teaching is worrying. People strive for better, and we cannot expect excellent teachers to dedicate their whole lives to a poor life in the countryside. Therefore, the document proposes to implement policies such as ensuring that the average salary income level of primary and secondary school teachers is not lower than or higher than that of local civil servants, and including eligible rural school teachers in the local government housing guarantee system. It is hoped that the policies will be in place soon. In addition, the document proposes that before urban primary and secondary school teachers are promoted to senior professional titles, they must have more than one year of grassroots work experience in rural areas. The original intention of the policy is certainly good, but it is also necessary to improve the assessment mechanism to prevent opportunists from just going through the motions in the countryside and delaying the education of rural children.
The “mutual aid” elderly care model in rural areas, where “those in their 50s and 60s take care of those in their 70s and 80s,” is worth promoting nationwide. On the one hand, people in the same village know each other well, which is reassuring. On the other hand, aging in place solves the problem of many elderly people not adapting to life in nursing homes, allowing them to spend their later years in peace.
The roots of Chinese culture are in the countryside. Protecting ancient towns, villages, ancient trees, and famous woods is not only the responsibility of rural people but also requires the joint efforts of the whole nation. It also requires the use of digital technology to protect and spread culture.
Only when farmers’ income increases can the “rice bag” and “vegetable basket” be secured: The document mentions that grain production should be stable, which implies that after years of efforts, grain quantity security has been basically solved, and there will be no major problems if we proceed at the current pace. However, we believe that it is still necessary to continuously increase investment in scientific research, strive to increase yield per unit, and deeply implement the strategy of “storing grain in technology”; vigorously develop digital plant protection to prevent major and sudden pests and diseases like the fall armyworm; and protect the legitimate rights and interests of large grain-growing households, stabilize their income, and reasonably judge and predict the impact of US grain imports in advance. A COVID-19 pandemic has resolved the pork crisis, but it is necessary to deeply reflect on the problem of “pig-free markets” and “pig-free counties.”
It is hoped that innovative forms can be used to support farmers’ income growth. For example, in the cross-provincial adjustment of arable land indicators, it can be considered to allow farmers in planting areas to enjoy the social security of the cities buying the indicators, with the cost borne by the buying cities. For cross-provincial adjustment of arable land indicators, one can pay attention to agricultural reclamation concepts: Beidahuang, Suken Nongfa, Dabeinong, etc.
Promoting the shift from “transporting pigs” to “transporting meat,” as well as vegetable transportation, all require cold chain logistics. The agricultural product cold chain logistics industry chain may usher in a period of development. One can pay attention to cold chain logistics concept stocks such as Binglun Environment, Tielong Logistics, and Jinbei Electric. In addition, Huatong Medicine (Zhenong Co., Ltd.) and Huilong Co., Ltd. under the supply and marketing cooperative system are also worth attention.
Strongly support the development of digital agriculture: The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a development plan for digital agriculture and rural areas on January 20. It is a general consensus to develop digital agriculture and solve the inherent problems of traditional agriculture. It is believed that within 5 years, it will be explicitly stated in the form of the Central Document No. 1 that digital agriculture should be vigorously developed. One can pay attention to rural government affairs concept stock Shenzhou Information and agricultural water-saving concept Dayu Water Saving.
Guarantee rural finance: Due to farmers’ poor personal credit, difficulty in assessing agricultural assets, and inability to mortgage them, there has always been a problem of difficulty in getting loans in rural areas. Can we learn from the Grameen Bank model in Bangladesh and use internet means to solve farmers’ credit problems? This is worth deep thinking by companies committed to agricultural inclusive finance.
Land use must be based on law: The document gave a centralized response to the problems existing in rural land use in the early stage. For example, opinions such as including land for agricultural supporting facilities in agricultural land management, allowing the use of arable land for agricultural facility land, strictly prohibiting non-agricultural construction in the name of agricultural facility land (“greenhouse” problem), and allowing direct use of rural collective construction land for the development of rural industries through shareholding, leasing, etc., still need to be clarified in the form of laws and regulations for implementation.
Talent and technology: Talent is the foundation, and technology is the root. To develop agriculture, in addition to mobilizing the enthusiasm of frontline farmers, it is more important to mobilize the enthusiasm of agricultural intellectuals, creating an atmosphere where the whole nation knows and loves agriculture. CCTV-7 has even merged agricultural and military affairs. It is hoped that all agriculture-related majors can enjoy the same “early admission” treatment as national defense military academies. There is no need to explore “early batch” admission for individual agriculture-related majors, as this will create a chain of contempt within agriculture-related majors.
Agricultural technology focuses on promotion, and especially needs the integrated development of industry, academia, research, and promotion. When supporting the development of agricultural technology, it is necessary to encourage professional division of labor and cooperation among government, research institutes, enterprises, and promotion agencies, so that everyone can write their papers on the land.
Published at: Feb 5, 2020 · Modified at: Dec 4, 2025
