Current Rural Policy’s Adjustments in China

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and the Ministry of Education jointly pay for textbooks and educational materials for children from poor families, the local revenues are limited to provide education for everyone.

• Transportation is still an issue for children who live in mountain areas far from schools.

5. New Rural Construction: In 2005, new rural construction was an important resource for development to economic, political, social, cultural and civil development. The policy was successful because it brought immediate improvements in rural infrastructure; help increased the economic growth and also institutions.

6. Household Registration System Reformation: As it was mention before, the life quality in urban areas is better than on rural areas; the government had to faced with more and more rural citizens migrating to cities. As a result, the central government introduced the household registration, which consist on restrict migration from rural areas to urban areas. In 2001, the Ministry of Civil Affairs relaxed the regulations, allowing rural residents to become urban residents in small cities and town but not larger cities.

5 Opportunities and Challenges in the countryside

Opportunities:

- In 1978, only 17.9% of the nation’s population lived in urban areas, and it increased to 26.5% in 1990 and 40.5% un 2003. Some rural areas have transdormed into towns and small cities.

- Improve access to education and healthcare and expand social protection.

- In 2014, China’s annual growth was 7% comparing with other years it decreased 3%. “This means that the government should focus more on quality of life, rather than pace of growth” (World Bank, 2015).

- China’s rural areas is also changing it’s path into a more sustainable environment, promoting sustainable agricultural practices; piloting sustainable natural resources management approaches; and strengthening mechanisms for managing climate change.

- Promoting more inclusive development by: health care and social protection; strengthening skills development programs; developing new job opportunities in rural areas and small towns.

- Advancing mutually beneficial relations with the world, by attracting global stakeholders.

Challenges:

- China had experienced two main transitions: one is from an agricultural society to an industrial society, and the other is from a planning economy to a market economy, which generated forces for development but also social instability.

- Balances between economic development and social parity, such as: education, health care, and income inequality.

- Among the regions, there are significantly differences in economy and culture. This is a barrier, because the government need to implement different polices to take care of different issues and they have to assume mores responsibility in providing resources for policy implementation.

- Another barrier is the fact that between the central government and local government there is a lack of coordination and communication, when it comes to implementing polices and distributing resources.

- Rural citizens have loose faith in local governments as well as in the central government.

- The central government is responsible for provide education within each providences and county. However, the not all of them have the same education level.

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