Addressing issues related to agriculture, rural areas and rural residents must be a top priority for the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said in an article to be published on Friday in the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee. 

The article notes that the efforts of the whole Party and the whole society should be mobilized to promote rural vitalization. 

The most arduous and heavy tasks in fully building a modern socialist country lie in the countryside, it says, likening a stabilized agricultural sector to the country's "ballast" in a fast-changing world. 

It stresses the importance of keeping a firm hold on the initiative for ensuring food security in China, calling for putting in place the strictest possible system for farmland protection and quickening efforts to bring about breakthroughs in core and key agricultural technologies. 

Facilitating rural vitalization calls for an improved top-level design, more vigorous measures and pooling of more strengths. 

The Party's comprehensive leadership of the work related to agriculture, rural areas and rural residents must be strengthened, the article says. 

It urges Party committees of all levels to make greater efforts for rural vitalization and for farmers' enthusiasm, initiative and creativity to be mobilized for building a beautiful homeland.  

(Cover: An aerial photo showing harvesters working in a wheat field at Huangfanqu farm, a national modern agriculture demonstration farm, in central China's Henan Province, June 6, 2021. /Xinhua)