Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government(5)

3. Unremittingly doing our work related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers well, and consolidating and strengthening the position of agriculture as the foundation of the economy

We carried out agricultural modernization while deepening industrialization, application of information and communication technologies (ICT), and urbanization, and we pooled resources to accomplish a number of major tasks that are important to the long-term development of agriculture and rural areas and to the vital interests of farmers.

-- We increased central government spending on agriculture, rural areas and farmers, which totaled 4.47 trillion yuan for the past five years and rose by an average annual rate of 23.5%.

-- We established a sound system for subsidizing grain farmers and a sound mechanism for subsidizing major grain-producing areas, broadened the coverage of the subsidies, and raised them every year, from 63.9 billion yuan in 2007 to 192.3 billion yuan in 2012.

-- We provided more rural financial services, and the outstanding balance of bank loans to agriculture, rural areas and farmers increased from 6.12 trillion yuan at the end of 2007 to 17.63 trillion yuan at the end of 2012.

-- We carried out the policy of minimum grain purchase prices and raised the floor prices for wheat and rice between 41.7% and 86.7%.

-- We intensified protection of farmland and farmers' rights and interests, and made a lot of preparations to improve the system of compensating for expropriation of rural collective land.

-- We made greater progress in agricultural science and technology and the development of modern agriculture, and we increased support for cultivating superior varieties and breeds, preventing and controlling animal and plant epidemics, and spreading agricultural technology in villages.

-- We built more water conservancy projects, improved rural land, developed high-grade farmland, and kept the country's total area of farmland over 121.3 million hectares.

-- Thanks to these efforts, China's overall grain production capacity reached a new level, and its grain output in each of the past six years increased and exceeded 500 million tons.

-- We strengthened rural infrastructure such as roads and water, power and methane supply capacity. We built or upgraded 1.465 million kilometers of rural roads, renovated run-down houses for 10.33 million rural households, provided safe drinking water for an additional 300 million plus rural residents, and delivered electricity to 4.45 million people in areas without power supply. This led to steady improvement in rural productivity and quality of life.

-- We encouraged surplus rural workers to find nonagricultural employment. The per capita net income of rural residents grew rapidly, and the relative income gap between urban and rural residents has progressively narrowed since 2010.

-- We deepened overall rural reform.

-- We basically completed the main tasks for reforming the collective forest tenure system, made comprehensive progress in determining, registering and certifying collective land ownership, and carried out trials for registering contracted rural land-use rights.

Sound agricultural and rural development provided important support for China to counter the severe impact of the global financial crisis and natural disasters and maintain overall stability in economic and social development.