This 14th five-year plan (FYP) is a cross-sectoral policy document at the national level. It outlines the policy framework, priorities and economic and social goals for 2021-2025. The Plan is divided into 19 Sections and 65 Chapters. The Plan is divided into 19 sections and 65 chapters, covering on all aspects of development over the next five years, as well as presenting China s 2035 vision. The 14th FYP is the first Plan that builds on the first centenary goal (achieving a Xiaokang society in all respects) and on the eradication of absolute rural poverty. It sets the basis for the second centenary goal build a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by 2049 through basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035.
The Plan, as a blueprint which charts the course for China s development up to 2025, requires to boost the overall agricultural production capacity. The main measures include: build a national food security industrial belt, implement high-quality farmland development projects, and build contiguous high-quality farmland of more than 71.67 million hectares; carry out chernozem soil conservation projects and strengthen the conservation of chernozem soils and restoration of soil fertility in northeast China; consolidate the foundation of grain production capacity and ensure the supply of important agricultural products such as grain, cotton, cooking oil, sugar, meat, and milk; enforce the strictest possible system for protecting farmland, strengthen the protection of farmland quantity and enhance its quality, ensure the total area of China s farmland stay above the red line of 120 million hectares, prevent the use of farmland for non-agricultural and non-grain purposes, regulate the balance between the occupation and replenishment of farmland, and strictly prohibit the replacement of superior land with inferior land and irrigable land with to non-irrigable land, etc.
A new development concept that combines sustained and healthy economic development with obvious improvements in quality and efficiency is at the centre of the Plan (Section 1). The aim is to achieve higher quality, more efficiency, more fairness, and more sustainable and safer development (1.2). The FYP s objectives put more emphasis on harmony between nature and human activities. For instance, Chapter 24 Rural Development Initiativesthe indicates that rural development initiatives aim to increase production, conserve and protect ecosystems, and improve the living environment. Chapter 33 Development of the Marine Economy states that coordinated development is the key. Coordination is required for activities on land and at sea to protect the health and integrity of marine ecosystems and the harmony between people and the sea while developing the marine economy. International cooperation is important in the search for win-win solutions.
The Plan seeks to improve people s wellbeing (section 8 on urbanisation, 9 on reducing regional disparities, 13 on human development and 14 on improving livelihoods). The 14th FYP closely follows past plans and builds on what has been achieved so far. It proposes: to achieve common prosperity through new rural revitalization and urbanization strategies; to promote equality between men and women and all-round development of women; establish a robust long-term mechanism for consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation achievements and improve the dynamic monitoring and targeted assistance mechanisms for preventing people from falling back into poverty; promote the adoption of the same standards for basic public services and the same systems in urban and rural areas; to increase the provision of services in education, healthcare, old-age care, culture, and other fields in rural areas; promote the exchange and job rotation of teachers and doctors in counties; and to improve farmers literacy in science, technology, and culture, and promote the revitalization of rural talents; to promote the rural toilet revolution in line with local conditions, boost comprehensive improvement of rural water systems, and organize in-depth village cleaning and greening activities to make public spaces, courtyards, and houses in villages, as well as their surrounding areas clean and tidy; etc.
The Plan seeks to enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems. The Plan encourages the areas that have got rid of poverty to develop featured farming and breeding industries, extensively organize activities to ensure better linkage between production and sales of agricultural products, and expand the assistance by boosting the consumption of goods produced by the areas lifted out of poverty. The Plan also proposes: to improve the system for guaranteeing government funding for agriculture and rural areas and increase support to them from the central government s financial transfer payments, proceeds from sale of land-use rights, and local government bonds; to improve the agricultural support and protection system, as well as the interest compensation mechanism for major grain-producing areas, develop a new system of agricultural subsidy policies, and refine the policy for setting minimum prices for state grain purchases; deepen the reform of supply and marketing cooperatives and improve the support mechanism for rural land use, to ensure that the reasonable land-use needs in developing protected agriculture and rural industries are met; improve the rural financial service system and the incentive mechanism of financial support to agriculture, expand the scope of financing guaranteed by rural asset collateral, and develop agricultural insurance; improve the green agriculture standard system and the certification of green food, organic agricultural products, and agricultural products with geographical indications; intensify whole-process quality and safety supervision over agricultural products and improve the traceability system; and build industrial parks of modern agriculture and agricultural modernization demonstration zones.
The Plan also seeks to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters including cimate change. The Plan proposes: to accelerate the drive towards a low-carbon economy to help achieve the 2030/2060 climate goals; to develop smart agriculture including developing water-saving and dry-farming techniques; channel more efforts into animal epidemic prevention and control of crop diseases and insect pests, as well as agrometeorological services; etc.