China's path to comprehensive rural revitalization: Challenges and solutions

Editor's note: As the annual Two Sessions commences, CGTN's Visionary Voices launches the "Global Think Tanks Unpack China Agenda 2025" series. Authored by experts from think tanks worldwide, these articles offer cutting-edge analysis of China's advancements in fields spanning the economy, technology, rural revitalization and cultural innovation. Each piece demystifies China's growth trajectory while illuminating its global significance. The third article explores how China can promote comprehensive rural revitalization and accelerate agricultural and rural modernization. Allawi Ssemanda, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is executive director and founder of the Development Watch Centre in Uganda. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

On February 25, 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a "complete victory" in the country's fight against extreme poverty. As the world lauded China's great success, the Chinese government observed that while China had succeeded in eliminating absolute poverty, "the most challenging and arduous tasks we face in building a modern socialist China in all aspects remain in rural areas" and announced China's strategy to ensuring rural development, calling it a "major task in realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."

Among all the measures that China has taken, providing a comprehensive and steady power supply is a fundamental element for the revitalization of rural areas. Energy is a major driver of socio-economic transformation of any society. It promotes innovation and industrialization. Small and large scale industries in rural areas, come with important multiplier effects such as employment opportunities, one of the main driving forces in fighting against poverty.

For example, in Jinzhai county, east China's Anhui Province, local government has installed 3KW distributed solar power facilities for 7,803 impoverished households, 60KW solar plants for 218 villages, and 15,000KW solar plants for 23 towns. It has not only increased incomes for the impoverished in both the long and short term, but also ensure the use of clean and stable energy. From 2014 to 2019, all 71 poor villages on the list were lifted out of poverty, and the poverty incidence rate in Jinzhai county dropped from 22.1 percent to 0.31 percent. The World Bank also agrees that China's remarkable economic growth is partly possible due to the country's capacity to produce and supply energy to meet the country's growth of energy consumption, thanks to the Chinese government and enterprises that continue to focus on energy development, especially clean energy.

Supporting and encouraging start-ups in rural areas is another strategy that can easily spark rural revitalization. Through start-up programs in rural areas, people can be empowered to gain entrepreneurial skills which is key to starting and running successful businesses. For example, in a cooperation project between south China's Guangdong Province and Guangxi Province, local government and enterprises introduced various projects and nurturing industries, starting entrepreneurial training which targeted rural people helping them with start-up projects which registered significant progress in the development of small scale industries and individual businesses. In a training center in the Nanhai District of Foshan in Guangdong Province, over 526 entrepreneurial leaders from Guangxi Province's Shanglin County were trained to start their businesses, helping over 5,087 people registered as poor to be lifted out of poverty.

Supporting local amenities and tourism is another strategy that China is using to achieve its goal of rural revitalization. China is blessed with countless natural resources such as lakes, rivers and mountains across almost the entire country. By saving such rivers and other water sources for agriculture and those water sources and mountains, if improved, can be used to attract both local and international tourists. As Xi noted in 2005, "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets." The tourism sector can be magic. For example, other than paying to access tourist areas, there are other multiplier effects that come with tourism development. Improved security, infrastructure – especially roads, and the hospitality sector like hotels which all contribute to employment opportunities and a source of income which is associated with the sector. In Shibadong village in Xiangxi, central China's Hunan Province, after adopting the strategy of using local tourism as a way of fighting poverty, the village was deregistered from the poverty register as local incomes grew from 1,668 yuan in 2013 to 25,456 yuan in ten years later.

Relatedly, China can use its huge size, big population and many ethnicities, to fast track its rural revitalization programs by supporting them to use their local resources to bring about meaningful social economic development. Such strategies can help in revitalization of rural areas with minority ethnic groups where people can proactively engage in production work rather than having a mindset of "waiting, depending, and asking for help." This strategy worked for example in Towankh Magget village, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where government embarked on empowering locals through a project of "one brand in one village" which saw the use of local resources to develop black fungus production, and a walnut deep-processing plant which both contributed to social economic development of the area while leaving locals' lives improved.

The other very important strategy that can help China in realizing rural revitalization is putting people at the center of everything. When people learn that whatever is being done is for their good and development, they all embrace and support such efforts. Development becomes easy as people are involved and willing to do anything possible to support what they know is theirs. As Xi observed while opening the 20th National Congress of the CPC; "The country is the people and the people are the country ... Bringing benefits to the people is the fundamental principle of governance." 

It's clear to the Chinese leadership that to achieve great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, some of the most important tasks are still in the country side. Considering discussed strategies, we can safely argue that China is on the march as the country eyes realizing her centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

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