Farmers are watering vegetables with a new irrigation system in a greenhouse in Chenzhai Village, Zhangye City, northwest China’s Gansu Province on January 31, 2023. 

After all the rural poor were lifted out of poverty in 2021, rural revitalization has been high on China’s agenda. During the 2023 “two sessions,” the annual gatherings of national lawmakers and political advisers, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that building up strength in agriculture is the foundation of a great modern socialist country, and promoting agricultural modernization is an essential requirement for achieving high-quality development. 

For a country with a population of over 1.4 billion, food security has been and will always be a top concern. The government work report sets the grain output target for 2023 at over 650 million tonnes. In addition, fostering new industries and new forms of business in rural areas to increase farmers’ incomes, building a beautiful and harmonious countryside, and strengthening technical and policy support to agricultural and rural development have also been discussed by lawmakers and political advisers. 

For a revitalized countryside, no large-scale return to poverty is the bottom line. In 2022, the average annual income of people lifted out of poverty grew at a robust rate of 14.3 percent year-on-year to RMB 14,342, higher than the 6.3 percent increase in per capita disposable income of other rural residents. 

In this issue’s Special Report, we zoom in on how the country is consolidating the poverty-alleviation achievements and revitalizing the countryside by focusing on cases nationwide of developing rural industries, promoting e-commerce, and attracting talents back to the countryside among others.