Premier Li Keqiang points to six barriers to rural progress
Li Keqiang outlines half a dozen common problems hindering progress in countryside after villagers in Inner Mongolia raise concerns
Poor roads, water and electricity supplies and medical services are just some of the factors holding back the country's vast rural areas, Premier Li Keqiang said in a rare, direct summary in response to concerns raised by farmers in an Inner Mongolian village.
Li visited the remote village of Taipingzhuang in Chifeng in March, and in a letter published in the on Sunday, he said the issues raised by the villagers "are also common problems hindering the development of rural China, especially villages in the north".
In the letter, the premier said the villagers told him during his March visit that they needed better roads, water supplies, electricity networks, and hospitals. Pollution and a lack of training for labourers were also major issues.
"When these problems are solved, many bottlenecks in rural areas will be removed," Li said.
The villagers' concerns underscore criticism that progress in the countryside has been slow compared with that in urban areas, posing a major challenge to the top leadership's ambition to create a "moderately prosperous society in all respects" by 2020. The Communist Party outlined the goal at its 18th congress two years ago.
Li Guoxiang , a specialist in rural issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said many local authorities could not provide basic services to their communities.
"Despite the growth of the economy as a whole, many local governments are poor and therefore unable to provide basic infrastructure and public services. It's a vicious circle that they have to escape," Li said.
Xie Yang , deputy director of the rural economic institute under the State Council's Development Research Centre, said that if the rural-urban gap in wealth and public services was not narrowed, "it will be impossible to build up a moderately prosperous society".
According to the National Energy Administration, 1.23 million people in six areas - Inner Mongolia, Tibet , Qinghai , Sichuan , Gansu and Xinjiang - still did not have access to electricity by the end of last year. The administration vowed to connect these households to the grid by the end of next year.
And the Ministry of Civil Affairs said that about 800 of the more than 40,000 towns across the nation had no cement or asphalt roads connecting the town seats to villages as of the end of last year.
Shu Hongbing , deputy president of Wuhan University, painted a grim picture of rural life when he addressed a group session at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in March. Shu said that in some mountainous areas, conditions were worse than they were decades ago.
In his hometown in Rongchang county, Chongqing , many children had to walk 5km to school because of poor infrastructure. He said he made the same journey 40 years ago, leaving home at dawn and returning in the dark. "Ninety per cent of farmers in our hometown are still living as people did in the old days. They don't die at hospitals, but at home, because they can't afford the medical fees," he said.
