At the third plenary session of its 17th Central Committee, which concluded on Oct 12, the Communist Party of China (CPC) approved a resolution on major issues concerning rural reform and development.

It was a new, significant move made by the ruling Party on rural development on the 30th anniversary of the Third Plenum of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978, which pioneered the country's historic reform and opening-up drive. The resolution, which is no doubt to serve as a guiding document for rural reform and development in the following years, draws an inspiring blueprint for the vast underdeveloped rural areas under the new situations at home and abroad.

In the document, the Party outlined a series of tasks and goals for rural development, ranging from economic, political, cultural, social and ecological construction to setting an ambitious development goal by 2020. The Party vowed to set up an integrated urban and rural economic development mechanism by that year, which will help maintain the country's grain safety and a sufficient supply of agricultural products. The per capita net income of the country's hundreds of millions of rural population would be doubled and absolute poverty would be eliminated in rural areas, the document says.