At the First Session of the 13th People’s Congress of Hunan Province, Deputy Long Siqing emphasised the need to strive to cultivate rural talents to help with rural revitalisation. “The key to achieving prosperity for a village is to have a good Party branch and the key to lifting a household out of poverty is to have a knowledgable person in the family,” she explained.

According to Long Siqing, the lack of rural talent is the key bottleneck holding back rural construction and development in Hunan. This is demonstrated in two aspects. On one hand, rural areas lack professional talents. “Hunan Province is blessed with extremely rich rural resources but it is short of competent personnel with knowledge of agriculture, rural areas, and rural management, who are able to settle down in rural areas to do hard and pioneering work. As such, many rural resources are not fully utilised and our green mountains and clear water haven’t been turned into mountains and rivers of gold and silver.”

On the other hand, it is difficult to realise “leapfrog-style” sustainable economic development in rural areas. The fundamental reason for that is the unpreparedness of the overall quality of farmers, who lack both knowledge and technology. The key to the revitalisation of rural areas in Hunan is the construction of a workforce for agriculture, rural areas, and farmers.

To this end, Long Siqing suggests expanding the coverage of the One College Student Per Village programme and establishing a special fund for rural personnel training.

Long Siqing agrees with the sentiment of the proverb “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The fundamental way out of the rural personnel shortage is to expend more effort training the existing personnel team. She suggests expanding the One College Student Per Village programme.

The One College Student Per Village programme is a key way for the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and Hunan Provincial People’s Government to build a rural talent team that “never retreats.”

“I myself am a beneficiary of this programme. In 2008 and 2012, I applied for junior college and undergraduate study in rural administration as part of the One College Student Per Village programme. After several years of study, I have not only realised my university dream and grasped theoretical knowledge of village management and rural Party construction; I have also gained an understanding of information technology and marketing strategies. I release sales information about agricultural products such as oranges on the online information platform and conduct business negotiations over WeChat, which is cost effective, easy, and fast. I am also committed to using what I have learnt for rural Party construction and the capacity of the Village Party Branch Committee and Villagers’ Committee have improved. Thanks to the firm grassroots-level Party organisation, the advantageous resources of the village are used to develop ecological agriculture. The villagers have become rich and the village has increased its collective income. I am deeply aware that the key for a village to achieve prosperity is to have a good Party branch and the key to lifting a household out of poverty is to have a person of knowledge in the family.”

Long Siqing hopes to use this programme to not only train village cadres but also to benefit more farmers. Therefore, she suggests recommends that Hunan CPC Provincial Committee and Hunan People’s Government give more support to the programme, upgrading the One College Student Per Village programme to a One College Student Per Household programme. Modern open and distance education offers villagers a “spiritual calcium supplement” and will help develop the strength of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers.

At the same time, Long Siqing suggests increasing input for the cultivation of rural personnel. A special fund for rural team building should be established in all government finances at all levels and included in the financial budget. It will mainly be spent on cultivating rural personnel and building bases to promote the development of rural personnel resources. Moreover, preferential policies should be created to support projects application and personal credit related to agriculture, and to create a good policy environment for rural personnel to start businesses and acquire wealth.

By Chen Meiqi, www.rednet.cn Writer: Chen Meiqi