The Three Agricultural Issues Debate

Author: Xu Xianglin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: China has historically been an agricultural country dominated by small-scale farming. Therefore, the issues of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers (commonly referred to as "the three rural issues") are inevitably the most urgent and difficult fundamental problems to address in the process of achieving modernization. In contemporary China, the rural areas are still the most impoverished, and agriculture remains the factor most likely to disrupt social and economic order. The great revolutionary practices of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping have proven that while the three rural issues are indeed challenging to resolve, they are not insurmountable. To address these issues in the 21st century, it is necessary to concentrate the wisdom of the entire Party and the people of the nation, as advocated by Comrade Jiang Zemin. Scholarly academic research is actually one of the essential components of "concentrating wisdom." As a conscious effort to contribute to solving China's three rural issues, this book adopts the approach of "debate"—a scholarly discussion on major theoretical and policy, as well as institutional issues related to the three rural issues. In essence, what is termed "academic debate," if stripped of its "gunpowder flavor," is nothing more than collective brainstorming within the intellectual community. I hope this book can contribute to collective brainstorming in resolving the three rural issues, and I also hope that readers concerned with these issues will feel free to share their insights.