China’s Pilot Projects of Information Entering Villages and Households

China’s Pilot Projects of Information Entering Villages and Households

Published: 2017.10.31
Accepted: 2017.10.31
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Assistant Professor
School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China

Background

According to the deployment and requirement of No.1 document issued by central government on promoting information entering villages and households, in 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has launched pilot projects in 10 provinces (cities) and 22 counties. In 2015, the MOA has further expanded the scope of the pilot projects and have obtained achievement for the stage.

Significance

Information entering villages and households is an important method for agricultural and rural informatization development. It sets up a bridge for urban-rural coordinated development, and plays an important role in speeding up the transformation of agricultural development mode and pushing forward modern agricultural construction. The goal of sending information into villages and households is to build information stations in all administrative villages, with the starting point of satisfying farmers’ information demand in production and lives, focusing on getting through the last kilometer information service, integrate the resources of agricultural public welfare service and rural socialized services, strive to build a sustainable development mechanism that features the trinity of government, service provider and operator, and realize convenient and efficient information service for ordinary farmers and new-type operating entities without them stepping out of the villages or households .

Phased achievements

As of end of 2015, pilot scope has expanded to 26 provinces and 116 counties based on local application, 7 940 village-level information service stations were built up, providing public welfare services for up to 1.196 million people, launching services for the convenience of people for 7.488 million people, and involving 290 million yuan and realizing e-commerce trading volume 790 million yuan. Major achievements include:

1) Satisfying farmers needs of information. Information entering villages and households gathered public welfare service, service for convenience of people and e-commerce at village-level information service stations, enabling farmers to obtain consulting service in aspects of policy, technology, market and animals and plants diseases and pests prevention and control. Farmers no longer needs to rely on previous experiences and blindly following others in planting and breeding. They could pay their electricity bills, water bills and phone bills at close places, purchasing tickets for public transport including bus, train and ship nearby, and making appointment to see a doctor online instead of runing a long way to the network branches in town. Farmers could also buy cheap and fine consumer goods from home, enjoying the same consumption service as urban residents. Village-level information workers and farmers generally responded positively that providing information into villages and households is good, which brings the world to the villages, promoting the village to the world, therefore enabling farmers to buy from the world and sell to the world.

2) Helping enterprises need of market expanding. Information entering villages and households has provided a big platform for telecommunication service providers, e-commerce companies and service providers to expand rural market. The companies agreed that countryside is an area of unexplored market, at the time pilot work has been launched with 18 related companies co-initiated a proposal to cooperate with the MoA, and jointly launched a development pattern to win people’s heart, gaining companies profit and ensuring farmers benefits. Telecommunication service providers promised to provide free 12316 dialing service and free wifi service for all village-level information service stations and allow left-behind personnel to have free video calls with family members working outside, realizing synchronous development of its own business in the process of providing public welfare services for the government. A lot of operating companies has successfully attracted banks, insurance companies, e-commerce and logistics enterprises to participate, which not only helped relating companies to extend their businesses to the countryside, expanding rural market, but also provided services for farmers such as micro-credit, cash deposit and withdraw, disaster insurance and purchasing and selling agency.

3) Improving management and service ability of government departments. Sending information into villages and households could not only quickly send the party’s rural policies into thousands of households, but also quickly understand agricultural condition, disaster situation, market and public opinions, and improve the service method of government departments, expand service scope and unblock service channels. By sending information into villages and households, digital gap between urban and rural could be effectively narrowed, helping farmers to overtaking urban residents at corners, changing the traditional statistical investigation method of reporting to upper level one by one into online direct reporting. The government departments could understand real situations timely from grass roots and could help farmers make effective connections with the market, practically changing the mode of production into sales deciding production and relieving price fluctuation of agricultural products. It could effectively solve the serious and long-time problem of lacking of public welfare services, promoting the public welfare services and operation service to bring the best of each other; could allow party’s mass line campaign be practically demonstrated and put into effect in broad areas of countryside, even remote mountainous areas.

Remark and expected progress

Practice shows that information entering villages and households could change agricultural and rural production and living mode. It is the new impetus in promoting the transformation of development mode and adjusting the structure of agricultural and rural economy. It is also a new approach in transforming agricultural administrative management bays, building up service-oriented government and, by closely connecting with the farmers, it has received profound welcome from farmers and showed good development state of joint force promoting and multiple parties winning.

During the 13th Five Year Plan, the MoA continues to further advance the work of information entering villages and households, enhance basic guarantee, speed up the pace of advancing, enlarge pilot scale, and strive to cover all provinces in 2016, expand pilot scope to more than 10 percent of all counties in 2017, and basically cover all counties and administrative villages in 2020. It will focus on the following key tasks. Firstly, building up an organizational system. Set up work promotion team for information entering villages and households, and improve business support system. Secondly, set up institutional system. Sum up effective experiences and doings from pilot projects in each region, following the practical needs of effective regulatory operation and prevention and control of three major risks, construct management institutional system and standard mechanism for information entering villages and households, and practically guard against any possible risk that might emerge. Thirdly, explore operation mechanism. Explore commercialized mode for information entering villages and households, set up market-oriented operation mechanism led by government with market as subject, and guide the construction of operating enterprises alliance for information entering villages and households. Fourthly, push forward the national platform to go online. Push forward  the national unified platform of information entering villages and households to go online for operation, further improve platform functions, develop mobile terminal application systems such as home edition and village community edition, and enhance measures to safeguard Internet and data security. Fifthly, innovate service mode for information acquisition. Fully utilize the platform of information entering villages and households, innovate the construction of agricultural information monitoring and forecasting system, and practically play the role of information on guiding production, leading market and serving decision-making.

REFERENCES

This article is translated from "2016 China Agricultural Development Report", which is the internal data of the Ministry of Agriculture.

 

Date submitted: Oct. 24, 2017

Reviewed, edited and uploaded: Oct. 31, 2016

 

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