The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) recently unveiled the Green Book of Rural Areas: Analysis and Forecast on China’s Rural Economy (2020-2021) at a conference in Beijing.

At the meeting, CASS Vice-President Gao Peiyong acknowledged significant progress made in the development of agriculture and rural areas in 2020. The progress was reflected in increased financial support for agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, and stable agricultural growth; a record high in grain output and the enhanced ability to guarantee food security; a complete victory in poverty alleviation with absolute poverty eradicated in the countryside; and steadily rising farmers’ incomes alongside a narrowing urban-rural income gap.

Shedding light on the developmental imbalance between urban and rural areas, Gao drew attention to the wide gap in consumption and market shares between the two sides, despite continuously optimized and upgraded consumption structures in rural areas. Expanding rural demands and effectively linking production and consumption in cities and the countryside are foundational to promoting urban-rural economic circulation, thus forming domestic circulation, Gao said.

Wei Houkai, director of the Rural Development Institute at CASS, noted that development of the rural economy was atypical in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic, so it is essential to interpret data in the Green Book of Rural Areas objectively and scientifically. He pointed out two future trends in China’s rural development: unavoidable aging and hollowing out of rural regions, and decreasing village numbers as a result of population transformation and urbanization; and the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, and the professionalization of farmers.

According to the Green Book of Rural Areas, agriculture is the foundation of the national economy, and the “dual circulation” strategy, which aims to smooth domestic circulation and let domestic and international circulations reinforce each other, is inseparable from agricultural development.

As the starting point and basis of the new development pattern of dual circulation, Chinese agriculture faces such realistic problems as inadequate natural resources, limited production growth potential, and dislocations between supply and demand structures, said the Green Book. It is vital to coordinate and leverage internal and external circulations on the product, capital, and technology levels, so as to contribute to national food security, food consumption upgrades, and resource sustainability.

Conference attendees said that as capital elements become increasingly rich, capital exports have replaced imports as the dominant factor in Chinese agriculture’s capital circulation model, and its dependence on foreign capital is getting lower.

The conference was co-organized by the Rural Development Institute, Social Sciences Academy Press, and the Think Tank on Urban-Rural Integration, all subordinate to CASS.