About a year ago Beijing released its much-touted “Document No. 1”, outlining a comprehensive strategy for rural development. The aim was to address the widening income gap between the rich cities and the poor countryside.
That document was rightly hailed as a major turning point in Chinese economic policy. Beijing issued a No. 1 rural policy document every year from 1982 to 1986, a time of dramatic agricultural reforms and huge rises in farmer incomes. For the next 17 years, however, rural reform was demoted to a secondary concern behind building the coastal export economy. Real farm incomes first stagnated, then began to fall in the late 1990s as agricultural prices dropped.
