A national meeting is expected to convene on experimental tax reform in rural areas in near future, the State Council, or the nation's cabinet, said at a meeting Wednesday.

The meeting was chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

The meeting said that 2005 is a crucial year for the tax reforms, which will diminish and reduce agricultural taxes and administrative fees.

The meeting said that the experimental reforms, which began in 2000, have achieved substantially lower the amount of taxes Chinese farmers pay. But the reform has exposed new problems and new measures should be taken to consolidate the achievements, the meeting heard.

In 2000, China first launched its experimental reform on rural tax and fee systems in east China's Anhui Province, in an effort to standardize the tax burdens on farmers and eliminate the growing administrative and arbitrary fees.

The number of provincial areas embracing the reform had grown to 20 by 2002, where 620 million farmers, or three quarters of the country's total, benefited from the reform. The outcome was that the financial burden on farmers was cut by at least 30 percent.

Before the reform, Chinese farmers used to pay 120 billion yuan (US$14 billion) in taxes and fees to local and central governments each year, or 150 yuan per farmer, a hefty burden by rural Chinese standards.

The Chinese government decided in late 2003 to abolish, exempt or lower 15 charges on the country's 900 million farmers. The government has announced that all taxes on special agricultural products will be repealed except for tobacco. The measures reduced the financial burden on farmers by 4.8 billion yuan annually.

Beginning 2004, the agricultural tax rate was reduced by more than one percent per year on average, and agricultural taxes were rescinded in five years, according to the governmental plan.

The meeting also discussed and passed in principle the bill of amendment to the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests, which was adopted 1992.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2005)