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Realizing goal of rural xiaokang
China's vast rural areas are lagging far behind the country's drive to become a xiaokang society. Policies should be devised to help these areas catch up. The Party's 16th national congress set the strategic goal of building China into a xiaokang, or moderately well-off, society by 2020. After two decades of reform and opening up, the country has seen a continual rise in its comprehensive national strength and people's living standards. This has laid a solid foundation for China's becoming a well-off society. Yet there is an imbalance in rural and urban economic and social development. The regional development gap is also noticeable. Two thirds of China's population still live in rural areas. In the coming decade, the success of the first stage of the country's xiaokang drive will hinge largely on the development of rural areas. To gauge the progress of China's rural development by 2010, a rural xiaokang index research group under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has put forward a framework composed of 27 indices to reflect the pace of rural development. Those indices, each with a different weight in the framework, are divided into four categories, namely social structure and production conditions, economic results, skilled and unskilled personnel, and living conditions. Combining the index framework with relevant statistics in 2001 and 2002, the research group compared the unequal pace of different regions and analyzed reasons for it. Based on the analysis model, we can see that from an overall perspective, rural China's progress on the road to xiaokang has been significant. In 2002, China's rural areas accomplished 70.6 per cent of the xiaokang target for 2010 on a quantitative basis, 4.8 percentage points higher than in 2001. The progress was, however, unbalanced. Among the four categories of indices, improving the ratio of skilled versus unskilled workers is slower than in the other three groups. Economic indices grow the fastest and can attain the 2010 goal within three years if the current growth momentum continues. The model shows it is obvious that agricultural production conditions are developing slowly, which demands serious consideration. The model also shows the number of trained farming professionals falls short of demand. More technical workers should be fostered to raise the technological level of rural production. Regional imbalance is another outstanding feature of rural China's development. Based on the statistical model, we can make a list of provinces and autonomous regions in terms of their development progress. The ranking basically matches the country's social development configuration. In the list, for example, the top 10 regions are in the east, six of which have attained the goal of xiaokang. Nine of the last 10 regions in the list are in the west, signalling the wide economic and social development gap between the east and the west. Five regions, namely Gansu, Yunnan, Qinghai, Tibet and Guizhou, have only achieved about 50 per cent of the xiaokang target on a quantitative basis, according to the analysis model. Each province or autonomous region has its own weakness in the model. In terms of skilled workers, for example, Tibet, Qinghai and Yunnan lag far behind other regions. The index of living conditions shows that Tibet and Guizhou are making slow progress. Many factors are behind the inadequate rural development presented by the model. There are different markers of progress. For example, per capita electricity consum-ption is a major indication of how xiaokang in rural areas is progressing. In developing the rural areas, special attention should be paid to the "weak points" in the model. They will roughly set the pace for the process of rural China's xiaokang development. The model shows that development of rural township enterprises and agricultural modernization (for example, raising the agricultural machinery level and increasing the acreage of irrigated farm land) will lay a solid foundation for rural development. The model also shows that raising the income level of farmers by transferring more rural labourers into urban areas can be a major method to boost rural development. Policy-makers should pay attention to weaker indices and devise policies to balance regional development. The State should reform the rural taxation regime further. The central government has promised to scrap agricultural tax on a gradual basis, which will reduce the financial burden on farmers. Meanwhile, more transfer payments from central coffers should be piped to the more backward western regions to help their development. The State is obliged to take measures to promote educational, cultural and health development in underdeveloped regions. The rural educational charging system should be reformed. Free primary and secondary education should be considered to reduce farmers' burdens. Investment in the provision of rural health services should also be increased. For local governments, it is an urgent task to find out their respective weaknesses in promoting rural development and devise specific and effective policies. Last but not least, the social security net in rural areas should be improved. It is an urgent task. In 2002, the social security network only covered 3 per cent of the rural population, less than 5 per cent of the coverage in urban areas. The low coverage rate has become a bottleneck for rural development. (The author is a researcher with the Institute of Sociology under the CASS. The article originally appeared in the Chinese Rural Economy magazine.) |
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