The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council unveiled the “No. 1 central document” for 2023 on February 13, the 20th consecutive No. 1 central document released by China’s central authorities to guide the work on agriculture, rural areas and rural residents since the beginning of this century, outlining key tasks for comprehensively promoting rural vitalization this year. Jingzhou is an agricultural powerhouse, and boasts of distinctive advantages in agricultural resources and geographic location. How will we fully implement the guidelines enshrined in the country’s No. 1 central document? Let’s see experts’ interpretation.
The document consists of nine sections and 33 items, and its main content can be summarized as completing basic tasks, advancing rural revitalization, and strengthening related support. Among them, the document underscores the tasks of strengthening the internal growth momentum of areas and people that have shaken off poverty, stabilizing and improving supportive policies, ensuring that people do not sink back into poverty in large numbers, and consolidating and expanding the achievements in poverty alleviation.
Nie Zulin, member of the Leading Party Members’ Group and Deputy Head of Jingzhou Rural Revitalization Bureau, said “This year we will further enhance the monitoring and assistance mechanism to prevent reoccurrence of poverty, expand the fruits harvested during the efforts to realize the ‘Two Assurances and Three Guarantees’, foster and boost industries, increase the proportion of the central government subsidies for rural revitalization, with the funds to be used for industrial development reaching 60 percent in 2023.”
To motivate the areas and the people lifted out of poverty depends on the industry support. Nie called for efforts to turn the advantages in resources, eco-environment, and culture into advantages in industries. To promote industrial integration, we need to break barriers between the production, processing, and sale of agricultural products, and push forward the integration of agricultural, cultural, and tourism industries.
Nie said that “we will promote the transformation from selling raw materials to processed products and the transformation from selling products to selling both products and services. To implement the industry-led anti-poverty policies, we will focus on the city’s four key agricultural industry chains, and carry out a batch of model industrial projects, improve the interest-binding mechanism from which farmers can benefit from a closer integration into agricultural industrial chains and raise their income. We will develop a new rural collective economy.”
Building a beautiful and harmonious countryside that is desirable to live and work in is integral to building China’s strength in agriculture. The “No. 1 central document” for 2023 also underlines the importance of advancing both material and cultural development. On the one hand, efforts will be made to ensure modern standards of living in rural areas; on the other hand, measures will be taken to promote cultural development in the countryside and foster a prevailing ethos of kindness, friendship, harmony, and peace. This year, Jingzhou will launched the beautiful countryside initiative in at least two areas across the city. Local authorities will seize the opportunities brought about by pilot reform to foster distinctive industries and highlight their features.
The document also points out that the country will improve the standardization of industries for fresh-cut vegetables and the central production kitchen. This is the first time that China’s No. 1 central document puts forward the cultivation of industries for precooked dishes. Jingzhou is one of the province’s core areas boasting superior agricultural resources in Hubei, and an important area for the production of major agricultural products in the country. In the First Central China Pre-made Food Capital Investment Promotion Conference held in 2022, Jingzhou seized the opportunities and worked hard to build itself into center for the ready-meals industry. The city attracted Fujian Anjoy Foods, Guoquan Group, Sino Diet and other leading makers of pre-prepared meals to settled in the city, with the value of the signed deals reaching 55.646 billion yuan.
Cao Shixue, member of the Leading Party Members’ Group and Chief Agronomist of Jingzhou Agriculture and Rural Bureau, said that with the aim of building Jingzhou into a national-level trading and distribution base for agricultural products, we will try hard to foster ready-meal industry, host conferences on pre-prepared dishes, and attract more industry-leading enterprises to settle in the city. We will step up efforts to foster the city’s ready-meals industry, pursue leapfrog development in agricultural product processing industry, and promote agricultural efficiency and peasants’ income increase, so as to contribute to the construction of the demonstration zones for high-quality development in Jianghan Plain.