“Absolute poverty has been completely eliminated in the land of China, and the poverty alleviation spirit will always flow in the blood of the Chinese nation, as an important driving force to promote national development and progress, and overcome all risks and challenges,” said Xie Fuzhan, president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), at a recent symposium in Beijing.

The symposium, organized by CASS, was convened on July 30, under the theme of “carrying forward poverty alleviation spirit and promoting rural vitalization.”

Xie pointed out that after the elimination of absolute poverty, the priority of the work relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural people has shifted to rural vitalization. It is necessary to fully realize the arduousness and complexity of the task of rural vitalization, and the gap between the status quo and the end goals. Plans and visions cannot be regarded as something that can be accomplished with ease.

“The comprehensive implementation of the rural vitalization strategy has a long way to go,” Xie noted.

“Poverty alleviation spirit is an important source of strength for comprehensively promoting rural vitalization,” said Wei Houkai, director of the Rural Development Institute at CASS.

To comprehensively boost rural vitalization, Wei suggested continuing to pool the resources of the whole of society through the joint efforts of the government, the market, and rural people. Continuing to adopt targeted measures and proceeding from reality, the country needs to actively explore diversified models with distinctive characteristics.

It is vital to constantly innovate, Wei suggested, with the reform of the land system and collective property rights system as the core. This will fully activate rural resources, markets, and entities, thus stimulating the internal vitality of rural vitalization.

Theoretical researchers and practical workers need to figure out how to effectively consolidate and expand the results of poverty alleviation, and align them with the various tasks of rural vitalization, so that the foundation of poverty alleviation is more stable and the results are more sustainable.

Wang Sangui, director of the National Poverty Alleviation Research Institute at Renmin University of China, proposed industrial revitalization as an approach. Affected by the human capital endowment of the unprivileged, poverty alleviation through industrial development mainly relies on the production of primary agricultural products and labor-intensive non-agricultural industries to help the poor increase their income.

Rural vitalization, however, is meant to build industrial, production, and business operation systems for modern agriculture to improve agricultural innovation, competitiveness, and total factor productivity. Therefore, in order to align poverty alleviation and rural vitalization, it is necessary to find a balance between helping the poor to find stable employment and expanding and strengthening rural industries, so as to benefit the poor in the process of industrial upgrading.

This requires a scientific industrial layout plan, Wang continued. While encouraging new types of agribusiness to develop, it is important to learn from the experience and models of industrial poverty alleviation, and establish an interest linkage mechanism that can benefit the poor and low-income people in the long-term and improve their abilities.