The urban-rural income gap is continuing to narrow since the growth of rural income has surpassed that in urban areas for several years in a row. The ratio of urban income to rural income was 2.72 last year, a drop of 0.16 from 2012. In 2016, the Engel coefficients (i.e., the proportion of food expenditure in total consumption spending) per rural household fell to 32.2 percent compared to 37.5 percent in 2012. Incomes increased even faster in poverty-stricken areas, with an annual growth of over 10 percent. The figure is higher than national average rural income growth. As a result, we have further reduced the number of rural residents living in poverty by over 13 million a year during the period under review.

Looking back, we have made remarkable achievements; looking forward, we are firm in our confidence. We will be closely uniting around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, and work diligently and blaze new trails to promote agricultural supply-side structural reform and consolidate the favorable development of agriculture and rural areas, so as to greet the 19th CPC National Congress with remarkable achievements.

Thank you.

Hu Kaihong:

Thank you, Minister Han Changfu. Now let's invite Mr. Han Jun, director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group to give us an introduction.

Han Jun:

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, we have followed a new development philosophy, taking agriculture, rural areas, and farmers as the top priority of CPC's work and promoted innovation in the practice, theories and institutions of work in this regard. We have held an annual Central Rural Work Conference for five consecutive years; issued the annual No.1 Central Document focusing on agriculture, rural areas, and farmers; formulated policies to comprehensively deepen rural reform, accelerate agricultural modernization, build a new socialist countryside, advance supply-side structural reform in agriculture, foster new growth engines to power agricultural and rural development; underscored the importance of agriculture and boosted its development. Thanks to the concerted efforts of the CPC and the entire country, difficulties and challenges in the development of agriculture and rural areas have been overcome and historic achievements made.

Just now, Mr. Han Changfu described the progress on agriculture and rural area development from six perspectives. The achievements should be attributed to the Party's leadership. Preliminary statistics show that, after the 18th CPC National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping took 23 inspection tours to rural area across the nation to gauge public opinion and seek solutions that would promote further rural development. In a series of instructions and speeches, he proposed new ideas and strategies for the work related to agriculture and the rural areas.

After the 18th CPC National Congress, we have accumulated important experiences in three specific aspects.

Han Jun:

Firstly, we continue to adhere to overall planning and top-level design in rural reform. Focusing on properly handling the relationship between farmers and the land, we have implemented measures for separating land ownership rights, contract rights and management rights for rural land. We have also made overall arrangements to carry out trial reforms with regard to rural land requisition, the marketization of rural collective land designated for commercial construction and the system covering rural residential land.

Focusing on properly handling the relationship between government and market, we have been constantly deepening reforms of the purchase and storage systems, as well as the pricing mechanism for grain and other important agricultural products. We have gained notable progress through pilot reform programs for ensuring guaranteed base prices for cotton from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and soybeans from northeast China.

In addition, we have also improved the agricultural subsidy system, promoted the integration of agriculture-related funds, innovated the rural credit and insurance mechanism, deepened comprehensive reform of the rural supply and marketing cooperatives and promoted reforms in the handling of reclaimed land.

We have ensured an orderly, stable and rapid reform mode. The implementation of a series of rural reform measures has injected powerful endogenous impetus to agriculture and rural development.

Han Jun:

Secondly, we have been working on a balanced and coordinated development between urban and rural areas. Despite the tightening financial revenue and expenditure, we continue to give priority to agriculture, rural areas and farmers in our public expenditures, which ensured the stable growth of the investment in these three areas.

From 2013 to 2017, China's national general public budget expenditures for agriculture, forestry and water are expected to reach 8.28 trillion yuan. More newly-added budget expenditures for education, culture, health care and other social undertakings were allocated to rural areas. As such, the basic standards and level of rural public services have been improved. We promoted new socialist countryside construction and carried out projects to improve the water supply, roads, power grids and internet connectivity in the countryside. We have also reinforced the dangerous buildings in rural areas.

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