Author: Xie Lunyu (Associate Professor, School of Applied Economics, Renmin University of China, Director of Institute of Peace and Development)
General Secretary of the Supreme Leader emphasized that "if the nation is to be revived, the countryside must be revitalized". The most arduous and arduous task of building a socialist modern country in an all-round way and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is still in the countryside, and the broadest and deepest foundation is still in the countryside. Implementing the rural revitalization strategy is an important historical task to win the victory in building a socialist modern country in an all-round way, and it is also the general grasp of the work of agriculture, rural areas and farmers in the new era. We must fully tap the great potential of rural revitalization in stabilizing economic growth, promoting high-quality development and realizing common prosperity from the height of coordinating the "two overall situations".
Accurately grasp the great significance of comprehensively promoting rural revitalization
Rural revitalization brings new opportunities for promoting high-quality development. Since the reform and opening up, China has rapidly promoted industrialization and urbanization, continuously improved the efficiency of factor allocation, and released the reform dividend, which has played an important role in creating "two miracles". However, compared with the rapid development of urban development, the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers has lagged behind. The implementation of rural revitalization strategy plays a vital role in supporting the integrated development of urban and rural areas and promoting the construction of new urbanization, and also provides a new opportunity for the transformation of old and new kinetic energy of China’s economic growth.
Rural revitalization brings new opportunities to stabilize macroeconomic fluctuations. In the process of rural revitalization, the improvement of agricultural and rural modernization will create high-quality employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, attract rural talents to return, and play a positive role in stabilizing employment and ensuring income. Rural revitalization will promote the transformation and upgrading of agricultural production mode, change the temporal and spatial pattern of agricultural production and trade, and comprehensively enhance the production and supply capacity of agricultural products, which is of great significance to ensuring the safety of agricultural products supply, stabilizing agricultural products prices and preventing inflation.
Rural revitalization opens up a new space for promoting pollution control and realizing the goal of "double carbon". Rural areas are rich in natural resources, which is an important support to improve the supply of ecological products and carbon sink capacity. Rural revitalization encourages areas rich in ecological resources to give full play to their green advantages. It is an important content to promote "peak carbon dioxide emissions, carbon neutrality", realize rural sustainable development and promote the construction of ecological civilization in China by linking five major revitalization with ecological revitalization, exploring the establishment of incentive-compatible ecological product supply and value realization mechanism and accelerating the capitalization of natural resources.
Rural revitalization provides a new path for promoting fairness and efficiency. China has entered a highly cooperative society. Improving the skills of rural labor force through skills training will effectively improve the cooperation efficiency of the whole society. At the same time, rural revitalization will improve the quality and fairness of rural education, help solve the intergenerational transmission problem of poverty in the long run, and save human capital for economic development.
Rural revitalization provides a new guarantee for achieving common prosperity. Rural revitalization puts more emphasis on improving the availability of rural resources and the accumulation level of farmers’ human capital in the process of development, building the sustainable development capacity of rural areas in an all-round way, improving the income-increasing capacity of rural residents, narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas and consolidating the foundation of common prosperity, thus providing effective means for achieving common prosperity.
In view of the fact that rural industries and infrastructure are relatively weak, and the utilization rate of natural resources, human capital and other factors and labor productivity need to be further improved, in the process of comprehensively promoting rural revitalization, we should focus on accelerating rural infrastructure construction, fully tapping the advantages of natural resources in rural areas and accelerating the accumulation of human capital.
Accelerate infrastructure construction and promote high-quality development of agriculture.
From the perspective of improving supply quality, with the continuous improvement of China’s rural infrastructure, especially productive supporting facilities, the ability of rural areas to undertake industrial gradient transfer is increasingly enhanced, which not only plays an important role in promoting agricultural and rural technological progress and production mode innovation, but also plays a positive role in optimizing China’s industrial regional layout and smoothing the economic cycle in urban and rural areas. From the perspective of effectively expanding domestic demand, rural revitalization can further play the key role of investment in rural infrastructure and public services in optimizing the supply structure, continuously improve the income level and income-increasing ability of rural residents, release the huge potential demand in rural areas, and promote the expansion and upgrading of rural consumer markets.
To strengthen rural infrastructure construction, the key is to make great efforts to build a "new agricultural infrastructure", change the traditional mode of farmers’ "depending on the weather" and promote the transformation and upgrading of agricultural production methods. In practice, it is necessary to strengthen the following basic links: First, continuously standardize the high-standard agricultural production process, speed up the construction of standardized facilities such as greenhouses, and enhance the natural risk prevention ability of crops; Second, according to the regional characteristics and product characteristics, strengthen the construction of agricultural products storage and preservation, cold chain transportation and logistics facilities, extend the sales time or wrong season sales, and realize the preservation and appreciation of products; The third is to speed up the improvement of the rural logistics system at the county, township and village levels, build strong logistics facilities and digital infrastructure, make full use of new marketing methods such as e-commerce platforms and webcasts, and promote the effective matching of high-quality agricultural products with market demand; The fourth is to promote the innovative application of supply chain, carry out the construction of agricultural products supply chain with agricultural and commercial interconnection, and establish orderly and stable links with important regions or national logistics centers; The fifth is to establish and promote the standardization system and product quality certification standard system of agricultural products, build agricultural products brands, surpass the agricultural products standards in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Guangzhou, strive for internationally accepted agricultural products certification, and enhance the global competitiveness of products.
Tap the advantages of natural resources and promote rural green development.
China’s rural areas have vast natural resources such as land and forest land, and the rich green ecological resources in rural areas have the advantage of being late-comer in the construction of ecological civilization.
To tap the advantages of natural resources in rural areas, we must first actively promote capital and new technologies to the countryside. On the one hand, support and encourage capital to go to the countryside to improve the utilization rate of rural production factors; On the other hand, actively promote the diffusion and application of new technologies and new products to rural areas, including the continuous improvement of agricultural mechanization and automation technology, and the wide application of new agricultural green technologies and digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas, so as to improve the productivity of rural production factors, thus promoting the transformation of rural production methods and farmers’ lifestyles, realizing the coordinated development of economic growth, farmers’ income increase and carbon emission reduction through clean energy supply and green industrial development, and opening up an effective path for green development in rural areas.
Secondly, continuously improve the "realization" ability of ecological capital. In the period of accelerating industrialization, the natural environment used to be an important factor restricting regional development, resulting in the so-called "green poverty" phenomenon of guarding Jinshan Yinshan without food. With the development of economy and society, people’s demand for green environment and ecological products continues to increase, and the economic and social value of green resources continues to increase. It is necessary to activate the sleeping natural resources, overcome the problem of "green water and green mountains are priceless", innovate the green financial service path, explore a new green development path with quantifiable and realizable value of ecological products, and truly transform the green water and green mountains into Jinshan Yinshan with increased income and wealth.
Finally, continuously improve the rural production, living and ecological environment. Develop ecological agriculture according to local conditions, implement green production projects, promote the deep integration of agriculture with tourism, education, sports, culture and other industries, and form a complex of nature+production+leisure+recreation; Invest more resource elements and public services in rural areas, strengthen the supporting construction of fire water supply, fire facilities and equipment, and small parking lots, improve water, electricity, communication and network facilities, and improve the modern livable level in the green ecological environment; Focusing on the treatment of rural garbage and sewage and the improvement of village appearance, we will promote the treatment of outstanding problems in rural human settlements in an orderly manner; Strictly observe the "red line" of ecological environment, and make scientific planning and rational development of tourism ecological resources.
Accelerate the accumulation of human capital and enhance the endogenous development ability of farmers
It is found that human capital is the lasting driving force of economic growth, and the differences of economic growth among countries mainly come from the differences of human capital accumulation and comparative advantages. To promote rural revitalization in an all-round way, we must focus on accelerating the accumulation of rural human capital. Strengthening the accumulation of rural human capital not only focuses on the long term, but also grasps the present. In the long run, in the overall situation of rural revitalization, we should pay more attention to improving the quality of rural education and the balance of resources, focus on blocking the intergenerational transmission of poverty after poverty alleviation, provide living water for rural revitalization of human capital accumulation, continuously improve the sustainable development capacity of rural areas and the income-increasing capacity of rural residents, accelerate the narrowing of the gap between urban and rural areas, and consolidate the foundation of common prosperity. To grasp the present, we should focus on three aspects:
First, in the process of rural revitalization, the improvement of agricultural and rural modernization will create more high-quality employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. We should improve the incentive policies, optimize the employment and entrepreneurial environment, attract more rural talents to return, create a large number of "Nong Erdai" successors of family agricultural management, rural cooperatives and leading enterprises, and promote the transformation of rural youth from identity identification to professional identity.
Second, in the process of promoting rural revitalization, we should pay attention to cultivating rural practical talent leaders who can lead one party and drive one, and expand the new generation of rural entrepreneurs, e-commerce talents and rural craftsmen in agricultural practice, so that rural human capital can reshape the new kinetic energy of rural development in combination with new technologies, new industries and new models.
Third, in the process of promoting rural revitalization, we should promote the transformation of farmers from farming to agricultural workers and local scientists. Through the training of labor skills and knowledge, guide farmers to change their identities from traditional farmers and migrant workers to modern agricultural workers and new agricultural management subjects; Through advanced agricultural means of production, agricultural machinery and equipment use training and technical service training, farmers will be promoted to improve their comprehensive quality of scientific and technological knowledge, management experience and technical skills, and become modern farmers who can effectively master new agricultural technologies, new machinery and new agronomy; By increasing the special financial investment in grass-roots scientific research, we will stimulate the innovation vitality of young agricultural science and technology workers, vigorously cultivate local scientists, and help more farmers change from knowledge users to knowledge creators.