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CPC: Building a new countryside
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-03-03 11:29
Zang Min, a 43-year-old beekeeper, used to lead a merry life, but smiles are
fading away from his face since he can hardly make a profit from his honey
export to the United States as before.
Zang, a native of Hushan village
in Feidong County of East China's Anhui Province, could score a net income of
50,000 yuan (about 6,210 U.S. dollars) each year before the U.S. imposed an
anti-dumping tariff as high as 183 percent on China's honey products.
"I
was traveling with my bees and collecting honey around the country last year,
but I eventually failed to recover my expenses after selling the honey to the
United States ," Zang said.
The sudden changes in the external
environment have plunged Zang's life into a predicament.
Zang, who has
been in the trade for eight years, is raising only 100 hives of bees as against
150 in the past, since "the more you raise, the more you loose," he complained.
However, Zang's life is likely to have a turn for the better, thanks to
the historic decision of the central government to rally all possible resources
to change the backward situation in the vast rural areas.
The
participants to the annual sessions of China's top legislature and advisory body
will mull over the hot topic of building a new countryside.
Zang hopes
that the decision will help many poverty-stricken areas including his native
village become prosperous and rich like many parts of the country.
The
fourth sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which are taken as significant
political events in China, will be held on March 3 and March 5 successively.
"My family and I are expecting good news from the NPC and CPPCC annual
sessions," Zang said.
The ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) hopes to
boost rural productivity, improve infrastructure construction, promote social
development and deepen democracy in the countryside as well as increase the
living standards of farmers, Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Office of the
Central Financial Work Leading Group said.
Kang Shaobang, a research
fellow with the Research Institute of International Strategies under the Party
School of the CPC Central Committee, said international background and other
factors were also taken into consideration when the Party was considering a
making such a decision.
Chinese President Hu Jintao said in the opening
remarks at the seminar for provincial and central government ministers on
building a new countryside that the global economic development is becoming more
unbalanced, the competition for resources, markets, technologies and talented
personnel is turning scorching, and trade protectionism is a common thing.
All these are posing new threats to China's economic and social
development.
According to a report recently published by the Organization
for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the assistance and subsidies granted
to farmers by EU countries account for 34 percent of farmers' total income,
those by the United States 20 percent, and 58 percent and 64 percent
respectively in Japan and the Republic of Korea, but only 6 percent in China.
Experts said that trade protectionism has forced many Chinese including
beekeeper Zang fall to become victims.
The losses of China's
agricultural products have run up to billions of dollars due to green and
technology barriers set by some foreign countries.
Therefore, China is
making hard efforts to reduce its heavy dependence on investment and export and
is set to maintain steady and rapid development by fueling more domestic demand,
experts said.
China's dependence on foreign trade was high as 60 percent
last year, but consumption only contributed 33 percent to economic development.
Lan Haitao, an expert from the Macroeconomics Research Academy under the
National Development and Reform Commission, said that the goal (of building
socialist countryside) can not be reached without significant improvement in
rural consumption power.
"The rural market is the stabilizer of China's
economy in the future," he said.
Tang Min, chief economist with the Asian
Development Bank's China office, echoed his view, saying the construction of a
new countryside can help solve the problem.
In China's rural areas, where
the population accounts for 72 percent of the country's total, the proportion of
retail sales of consumer goods in the total retail sales of consumer goods has
dropped from 65.7 percent in 1980 to 32.9 percent in 2005. The expanding income
disparity between urban and rural areas, which is 3.22: 1, constitutes the main
factor in this regard.
Peace, development and cooperation remain the
irresistible trend of the times, but the international environment is changing
rapidly and unpredictably. Factors leading to instability and uncertainty in
peace and development are on the rise, and are posing new challenges to China's
security.
"Only when the problems relating to agriculture, rural areas
and farmers have been solved properly, can China's economy develop in the
correct direction," said a CPC document.
"It is an important historic
mission China must accomplish on its road toward modernization," it said. "This
should become a common understanding of the entire Party and the whole
society."
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