MKsports Luancheng town, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province on February 23, 2025. Photo: VCG" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2025/2025-02-23/cac61e1c-efca-450a-884c-5b232b57ced9.jpeg" />

Farmers use agricultural machinery to fertilize winter wheat in Chaizhao village, Luancheng town, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province on February 23, 2025. Photo: VCG

China unveiled its "No. 1 central document" for 2025 on Sunday, outlining the priorities for further deepening rural reforms and taking solid steps in advancing all-around rural revitalization. The document emphasizes further strengthening the supply of key agricultural products to safeguard grain security and developing new quality productive forces in agriculture, among other tasks.

As the first policy statement released by China's central authorities each year, the document is seen as an indicator of policy priorities.

The document consists of six parts covering six areas: ensuring the supply of grain and other important agricultural products, consolidating the achievements of poverty elimination, developing local industries, advancing rural construction, improving the rural governance system, and optimizing the rural resource allocation system, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

This is the 13th "No. 1 central document" on agricultural and rural work since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, underscoring the great importance China's top leadership attaches to agricultural modernization, rural revitalization as well as farmers' livelihoods, Chinese experts noted.

The document calls for enhanced efforts in work related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers in 2025 and beyond, and sets the goals of advancing all-around rural revitalization and consolidating the country's agricultural foundations further.

With reform, opening-up, and scientific and technological innovation as driving forces, the country will safeguard its grain security and ensure that no large-scale lapse or relapse into poverty occurs, the document says.

The country will make every effort to enhance agricultural efficiency, invigorate rural areas and increase farming incomes, thereby laying a solid foundation for the advancement of Chinese modernization, the document stresses.

New quality productive forces

The document emphasizes the importance of developing new quality productive forces in agriculture in light of local conditions. It also calls for the cultivation of leading high-tech agricultural enterprises, and the acceleration of breakthroughs in crop varieties.

The document also for the first time underlined new quality productive forces in agriculture, according to People's Daily, which carries rich meanings, including biological breeding technology, drone technology, artificial intelligence, and digital technology, among others. They can effectively change the state of agricultural production and development, and are of great significance for accelerating the process of agricultural modernization, according to analysts.

Hu Qimu, deputy secretary-general of the digital-real economies integration Forum 50, told the Global Times on Sunday that as the world is grappling with rising geopolitical conflicts and trade protectionism which also affect global food supply chains, it is essential to leverage new technologies to drive agricultural transformation and upgrading, and move toward a more tech-intensive, high-quality development model.

Tian Yun, a veteran economist, told the Global Times on Sunday that urban-rural integration is a major trend in China, and industrial revitalization occupies a key role in China's rural revitalization.

In terms of implementing modern technologies in agricultural digitization, which is steadily becoming more affordable with the adoption of homegrown AI technologies such as DeepSeek, China is facing unprecedented opportunities, Tian said.

"Over the past few years, agriculture in China has been reducing the use of fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural plastic films, relying more on ecological approaches and intelligent digital technologies. This shift embodies the essence of China's rural industrial upgrade," Tian said.

China will support the development of smart agriculture and expand the application scenarios of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and low-altitude systems, according to the document.

It outlines plans to expand cold-chain logistics and instant retail services to townships, and encourages regions with suitable conditions to establish public charging and battery-swap facilities for electric vehicles.

Rural revitalization 

To promote the effective management and utilization of rural resources and assets, the document calls for the exploration of feasible ways to make good use of legally owned rural housing through methods such as leasing, equity participation and cooperation.

The document urges innovation efforts related to the financing mechanisms for rural revitalization. Steps will be taken to strengthen support from central budget investments, ultra-long special government bonds, and special local government bonds for major projects in agriculture and rural areas. Monetary policy tools will be utilized to encourage financial institutions to increase funding for rural revitalization.

Reforms related to forestry, state farms, and supply and marketing cooperatives will be advanced in a coordinated manner. The document stresses the importance of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure, of enhancing comprehensive reforms of water pricing and water rights in the agricultural sector, of strengthening water usage management, and of promoting water-saving irrigation technologies.

Eligible cities are encouraged to include their agricultural migrant populations with stable employment into the scope of local urban housing security policies gradually, the document notes.

Agriculture remains vitally important as it directly affects people's livelihoods - particularly for some 500 million rural population, so the strengthening of the agriculture sector is crucial, Hu said.

Promoting county-level economies could be key in rural development such as spurring local industrial growth, enhancing regional economic structures and reducing employment pressure on cities, Hu added.

County-level economies differ from purely rural ones in their industrial mix, allowing for the expansion of manufacturing, specialized cultural tourism, and other high-value-added sectors, Hu said, adding that it not only helps shift labor toward secondary and tertiary industries, but also alleviates overcrowding in major metropolitan areas.

The document published on Sunday also called for the study and use of the examples set by the "Thousand Villages Demonstration and Ten Thousand Villages Renovation" project, launched in 2003 in East China's Zhejiang Province, which has successfully created thousands of beautiful villages, fundamentally changing the face of the province's countryside.