The annual central conference on rural work, which begins on December 28 in Beijing, will set the tone for next year’s agricultural and rural development. CGTN talked to Professor Li Xiaoyun, director of the Research Center for International Development at China Agricultural University, about the meeting and the expected highlights of next year's work in the discipline.

Li said China has been dealing with long-standing fundamental realities for the last few years and has been making marked progress in improving the livelihood of people in rural areas, thus closing the gap between urban and rural China. Among the measures in ridding poverty, Li suggests targeted poverty alleviation and industrialization have proven effective. 

He expects the country to continue to push for poverty alleviation, food security and green growth in the countryside in 2018. 

Li said "revitalizing the countryside" will be the guiding strategy for the sector.

He predicted that the strategy will focus on modernization as being the answer for most of the countryside's problems. He explains that it doesn’t just mean upgrades in machinery and technology, which will be important to the strategy, but also getting farmers to work with new, modern mentalities, getting them into the whole industry chain, and giving them modern ways to deal with their products, such as making use of e-commerce platforms and new branding and sales ideas. These are the directions modern agriculture development will go in.