[March 14, 2006]

LEAD: China formally approves 5-year plan favoring farmers+

(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)BEIJING, March 14_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING DETAILS)

Chinese legislators on Tuesday formally approved a five-year social and economic development plan that will guide the country's domestic policy through 2010 by advances in the vast but impoverished countryside.

The National People's Congress concluded its 10-day annual session by voting to approve the 11th Five-Year Plan. About 97 percent of the 2,891 congressional delegates cast supporting votes.

The Chinese Communist Party, the dominant force in the Chinese parliament, approved the plan at a closed meeting last October, and the essence of it has already taken effect.

The plan represents a policy shift from boosting urbanization and industrialization to focusing on rural areas, which are home to an estimated 800 million people who are also among China's poorest and most restless for change, official media said.

Parts of the plan call for overhauling the countryside to raise farm productivity and farmer incomes, increasing the 2005 per capita gross domestic product of $1,700 to $2,400 by 2010 and cutting energy use by 20 percent by the same year.

Finding fuel for the nation's rapid growth became a focal issue over the past five years.

Premier Wen Jiabao said Tuesday that items in the plan should allow the country to develop peacefully.

"Through China's own development, we have successfully charted a course to scientific development, which is to focus on conservation of natural resources and energy," Wen said at an annual press conference. "China's development will have no negative impact on the world."

The plan projects 8 percent economic growth for 2006 and 7.5 percent for the five years to 2010 via reduced energy consumption and pollution, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

China's economy has grown at an average of 9.5 percent over the past five years.

Congressional delegates said before the session opened March 5 that the plan was aimed largely at farmers, many of whom have lost land to urban development or suffered from a lack of health insurance or tuition breaks for their children.

Last week, National Reform and Development Commission Minister Ma Kai said 45 million farmers would be trained in the next five years to take industrial jobs.

Also during the five-year plan period, the central government plans to spend more on rural drinking water to provide safe supplies to 100 million residents and extend electricity to 3.5 million more rural households, the state-run China Daily reported.

Another goal is a cooperative medical insurance plan to cover about 80 percent of rural China, up from 23 percent now, the China Daily said.

Chinese farmers normally do not follow the national government and some said last month they did not know the congress cared about their welfare.

Farmers in a mountainous village of Chengde, a city in Hebei Province in northern China, said local land reforms had progressed since the 1980s but that they cannot make money planting fields or grazing sheep. Farmers said they must also hold day jobs in the city to earn a living.

"What I'm telling you is the truth," said Han Yu, whose family of eight plants tomatoes and squash on 0.2 hectare of land. He suggested that congress deputies "go into the village if they want to know what's going on."

Wen acknowledged during the press conference that his government had not gone far enough to meeting basic needs.

"What I think hurts me the most is that in my past three years I have not been able to better resolve the issues people care most about, such as healthcare, education, housing and safety," he said.

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