On February 23, 2025, the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Further Deepening Rural Reform and Solidly Promoting the Comprehensive Revitalization of Rural Areas" was announced.

This is the 13th Central Document No. 1 that focuses on the "three rural issues" since the new era.

The document proposes to do everything possible to promote agricultural efficiency, rural vitality, and farmers' income, and provide basic support for promoting Chinese-style modernization.

In May 2024, General Secretary Xi Jinping demanded that during his inspection in Shandong, he should promote agricultural efficiency, farmers' income, and rural vitality; in September, on the occasion of the seventh "China Farmers' Harvest Festival", General Secretary Xi Jinping once again emphasized that "doing every means to promote agricultural efficiency, farmers' income, and rural vitality."

From December 17 to 18, 2024, the Central Rural Work Conference was held in Beijing. One task was to discuss the draft discussion of the Central Document No. 1 in 2025. General Secretary Xi Jinping made important instructions to "promote a more stable agricultural foundation, a more prosperous rural area, and a more prosperous life for farmers."

The Central Document No. 1 in 2025 is the first Central Document No. 1 after the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. China's reform began in the countryside. The reform profoundly changed China's rural areas, greatly liberated and developed rural productivity, and changed the fate of hundreds of millions of farmers.

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that solving various contradictions and problems faced by agricultural and rural development requires fundamentally deepening reform.

In the spring of 2016, in Xiaogang Village, Anhui, General Secretary Xi Jinping leaned over to observe the "big contract" contract with 18 villagers pressing the red handprints, and was deeply moved: "What I did with my own family and life back then became a thunder of China's reform and became a symbol of China's reform."

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we have gradually established the "three rights separation" of rural land ownership, contract rights and management rights, steadily and prudently promoted the pilot reform of rural homesteads, promoted the entry of rural collective commercial construction land into the market equally with state-owned construction land, and steadily promoted the land transfer income to more use of agriculture... Reform to the "three rural areas" has always been the highlight.

We must focus on the main line when deepening rural reform.

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the main line of deepening rural reform under the new situation is still to handle the relationship between farmers and land. The biggest policy is to adhere to and improve the basic rural management system and must not be shaken. Establishing a land contract management right registration system is the guarantee for achieving stability in land contract relations. We must do this work quickly and effectively, so that farmers can truly enjoy a "peace of mind".

This year's Central Document No. 1 emphasizes the stabilization and improvement of rural land contract relations. Adhere to "big stability and small adjustments", orderly promote the pilot project of extending the second round of land contracts for another 30 years after the expiration, expand the scope of the pilot project in the whole province, properly resolve conflicts and disputes in the extension of contracts, and ensure that the contracted land of most farmers is generally extended and maintained stability.

To deepen rural reform, we must focus on the bottom line.

The Central Document No. 1 requires exploring the effective implementation form of revitalization and utilization of housing legally owned by farmers through rental, equity investment, cooperation and other methods. Orderly promote the reform of the entry of rural collective commercial construction land into the market and improve the income distribution and rights protection mechanism. It is also clearly stated that urban residents are not allowed to buy rural houses or homesteads in rural areas, and retired cadres are not allowed to occupy land to build houses in rural areas. Maintain the land contract rights, homestead use rights, and collective income distribution rights of farmers who settle in cities in accordance with the law.

This is the insurmountable bottom line of rural reform.

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that no matter how it is changed, the collective ownership of rural land cannot be destroyed, the arable land cannot be reduced, the grain production capacity cannot be weakened, and the interests of farmers cannot be damaged.

We must adhere to the red line when deepening rural reform.

"The people will not eat until the grain is not eaten, and the grain is not born without the land." Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has devoted a lot of effort to protect the cultivated land, pointing out that "we must adhere to the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, and we have issued a military order. We must do it without any room for bargaining"; we instructed "to take effective measures to effectively protect and utilize the black soil, the 'giant panda in the cultivated land"; we emphasized that "taking hard measures to grow teeth, comprehensively strengthen the responsibilities of local party committees and governments at all levels to protect the cultivated land"...

Seek progress while maintaining stability. Deepening rural reform and promoting the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas must "stabilize" the basic foundation of the "three rural issues", and are the two bottom lines to ensure national food security and avoid large-scale relapse into poverty.

Up to make progress and stabilize. "Enter" means making good use of the magic weapon of reform, satisfying the farmers' yearning for a better life, coordinating urban and rural areas, and allowing agricultural migrant populations to better "enter the city" without any worries.

The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made systematic arrangements for "improving the system and mechanism of urban-rural integrated development."

This year's Central Document No. 1 proposes to improve the urbanization mechanism of agricultural migrant population. Promote the linkage of transfer payments, new construction land indicators, infrastructure construction investment, etc. with the urbanization of agricultural migrant population. Cities with conditions are encouraged to gradually include agricultural migrant population with stable employment and life in the scope of urban housing security policies. The restrictions on household registration insured in the place of employment will be completely lifted.

It is both a huge consumer market and a huge factor market. It expands domestic demand and has huge space in rural areas and can achieve great things.

Improving the system and mechanism of urban-rural integrated development and promoting common prosperity, hundreds of millions of farmers will simultaneously move towards comprehensive modernization, which will release huge creative momentum and consumption potential and inject strong impetus into economic and social development.

Planning: Zhang Xiaosong

Chief writer: Wang Libin

Visual: Wu Jingjing, Jia Yining

Domestic production of Xinhua News Agency

Produced by Xinhua News Agency's No. 1 Studio