30 years of reform and opening up, rural changes have attracted worldwide attention

This year is the 30th anniversary of reform and opening up, and it is also the 30th year of China’s rural reform. The development of China’s agriculture affects the development of the entire Chinese economy. , summarizing the experience of rural reform, especially discovering the relationship between rural reform and the overall reform of the national economy, is undoubtedly of great significance for developing new reform ideas and promoting the coordinated development of my country's urban and rural economies.

From the special economic zones to the land contract responsibility system to the construction of new socialist countryside to free nine-year compulsory education, from the economy to the land on which farmers depend for their survival to the "three rural" decisions to the issues affecting thousands of households. Regarding education issues, thirty years of ups and downs have brought us earth-shaking and real changes.

Before the reform and opening up, almost every household lived in a straw house. After 30 years of reform and opening up, most of the houses now are buildings, and even bungalows have gradually become fewer. In the past, cattle were used to work and plow the fields; but now, advanced plowing machines have replaced simple labor. What used to be a narrow dirt road turned into a "cement road" when it rained. It has now become a truly wide concrete road, with three or four cars in the middle able to pass side by side, unimpeded on the street. The sidewalks on both sides of the road are filled with tall trees. Don’t worry about not being able to go out on rainy days. Now the country has reduced or exempted agricultural fees for farmers, and the agricultural tax, the "imperial grain" that has lasted for 2,600 years, has been completely cancelled. Now the tuition and miscellaneous fees for farmers' children are also exempted, and compulsory education has been fully implemented. The parents and villagers have benefited and feel happy.

With the improvement of national policies, the lives of rural people have become more active, cultural education has also improved, more and more college students and graduate students have been trained, science and technology have been updated day by day, and the ways for rural people to get rich have also improved. There are more and more people, the road is getting wider and wider, and the day when all the people can achieve a moderately prosperous life is getting closer. . . . . .

The changes that have taken place in the 30 years of reform and opening up have attracted worldwide attention. To Chinese farmers, to a certain extent, it is like a dream for many people to have such big and profound changes. To illustrate with a few simple data, we first solved the "food and clothing problem", including farmers' food and clothing. The entire country used to implement a rationing system, requiring food stamps, oil stamps, and tofu stamps. Now they are all gone, so there is no need to get stamps. , indicating that the supply of agricultural products is extremely abundant. From the supply side, for example, grain. Before the reform in 1978, my country's total grain output was a little more than 600 billion jins. Last year, the total grain output was 1,003 billion jins. Grain production increased by more than 60% in 30 years. Few countries in the world can Doing this will solve the problem of food and clothing.

Moreover, since 2007, with the support of the central government, local governments have worked together to establish a rural minimum living security system across the country. At the end of last year, about 34 million farmers in rural areas across the country were included in the system. From this point of view, the subsistence allowance solves the food and clothing problem for farmers and the entire country. Therefore, later in the city, a very important foundation for the reform and opening up of industry, commerce and other aspects was to provide enough food, which greatly enriched the market.

But generally speaking, the issue of dual economic structure between urban and rural areas is a concept in economics. Originally, it is an advanced urban economy and a backward rural economy. This is a technical aspect, but These two results bring about the income gap between urban and rural residents. Compared with cities, the income of farmers is only about 1/3 of that of urban residents. So in this sense, 30 years of reform and opening up have brought great changes to agriculture and rural areas, brought a lot of benefits to farmers, and also laid a relatively solid foundation for the reform and opening up development of the entire Chinese economy. However, because there are too many problems left over from the past rural history, 30 years of reforms have only solved part of them. Therefore, judging from the current urban-rural development gap, the task of further deepening rural reform and promoting faster rural development is still quite arduous.

In recent years, especially after the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the requirement of "coordinating urban and rural development", the central government has clearly put forward two requirements: one is to require the construction of state-led infrastructure. The focus shifted to rural areas. There are now more than 34,000 towns and more than 640,000 villages in China. From the current point of view, it is not a problem to provide cement roads in every township. In addition, more than 85% of administrative villages have public buses, making it easier for farmers to travel. This has been achieved in recent years. After 1998, the state increased investment, probably more than 200 billion a year, to help rural areas transform their power grids. Therefore, most rural areas now have electricity. Some of them are particularly remote, and the economic benefits of being connected by a large power grid are not good. The state is trying to develop small water conservancy projects locally and provide them with solar and wind power generation to solve the lighting problem. Therefore, I want to go forward and the infrastructure construction in rural areas can gradually approach that of cities. Of course, there will still be a gap. Another aspect is housing. Rural residents rarely surpass urban residents in terms of economic life indicators, but their housing quality exceeds that of urban residents. The per capita housing area of ??urban residents is not as large as that of rural residents. Of course, farmers' own houses combine production and living, so it makes sense to make them larger. A very important point is that in the past, there were thatched houses, but now they are gradually transformed into brick houses, and then into cement houses, and some into small buildings with two or three floors.

In some developed areas, farmers probably renovated their houses three or four times. Later, when the economy became rich again, when they saw that others had better houses, they followed their example and demolished and rebuilt them.

There are also basic public services provided by the government. We talk most about compulsory education in rural areas and cooperative medical care for farmers. These aspects have undergone great changes in recent years. By 2007, there were 148 million children receiving compulsory education at or below the nine-year system in rural counties across the country. Since last year, they have been completely exempted from paying tuition and miscellaneous fees, and they do not have to pay to study. Since the fall semester started in September last year, the government has provided free textbooks to nearly 1.5 children. There are 7 to 8 million of them who need boarding because their families are far away. The government has also provided some subsidies to these children. This was the case in the past. Unthinkable.

In terms of medical care, there are currently more than 700 million farmers participating in the new rural cooperative medical system. Although the level is not high, at the level before last year, each farmer paid 10 yuan himself and the central government provided 20 yuan. The local government subsidizes another 20 yuan, which is 50 yuan, but it can solve some problems. Starting in 2008, the central government decided to raise this level, and everyone will be given one. Farmers contribute 20 yuan, local governments contribute 40 yuan, and the central government also contributes 40 yuan, which is one hundred yuan. In addition, I just mentioned that rural areas cover the minimum living security, which belongs to the social security network. For farmers, the level of public services is also constantly improving.

In recent years, China's macroeconomic situation has been relatively good, with relatively rapid economic growth and relatively rapid growth in residents' income, which is directly related to this. Therefore, urban economy or macroeconomics and rural economy are closely linked. Good rural economic development will provide a very solid foundation for the entire national economy, and good macroeconomic development will enable the country to have more financial resources to solve rural problems. infrastructure construction to provide public services to rural areas. In this sense, it once again proves that the coordinated urban and rural development proposed by the 16th National Congress is very targeted and very necessary.

In the past 30 years of reform and opening up and 30 years of rural reform, rural changes have attracted worldwide attention and have achieved earth-shaking changes and brilliant achievements