China to balance urban, rural development

BEIJING - China will improve the mechanisms for coordinating urban and rural development in an effort to allow farmers to share the fruits of the country's modernization.

"The country's dual urban-rural economic structure is the major obstacle for integrating the development of urban and rural areas," said the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in a key reform roadmap released on Friday.

The dual urban-rural economic structure refers to the different growth patterns in cities and rural areas that lead to a wide urban-rural gap, a chronic problem in China.

China must set up a new type of industry-agriculture and urban-rural relations in which the industrial sector promotes agriculture, urban areas support rural development, agriculture and industry benefit each other, and urban and rural development is integrated, according to the document.

The country must grant farmers equal opportunities of participation in its modernization drive and share the benefits from modernization.

While implementing and improving the most strict policies of arable land protection, the country will grant farmers rights to possess, use, benefit from and transfer their contracted land, as well as the right to use their land ownership as a collateral or guarantee, the document showed.

Farmers will also be allowed to use their land right to become a shareholder in the industrialized operations of agriculture.

The document also made it clear that China will grant more property rights to farmers and promote the equitable exchanges of production factors between cities and rural areas and balanced distribution of public resources.