Author: Wei Xi Li Yuxia Bin

  China's poverty alleviation task has been fully completed, and it has entered a new starting point for rural revitalization.

How to fight this new battle?

At the time when the National People's Congress and CPPCC National People's Congress were convened, many representatives of the National People's Congress and CPPCC members believed that the importance of digitalization has been highlighted after the epidemic, and that rural revitalization should rely on digital power.

Data map: Aerial photography of the "golden" countryside after rain in Xinyu, Jiangxi, presents a unique rural beauty.

Photo by Zhao Chunliang

How popular is the "digital village"?

  In May 2019, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Digital Village Development Strategy Outline"; the No. 1 Central Document for 2020 and 2021 also successively proposed "Developing National Digital Village Pilots" and "Implementing Digital Village Construction and Development" engineering".

  Today, the implementation of the digital village development strategy has reached the starting point of the second stage: by 2025, significant progress will be made in the construction of digital villages, and the urban-rural "digital gap" will be significantly reduced; 4G will be further popularized in rural areas, and 5G innovative applications will be gradually promoted; rural circulation services will be more Convenience, the prosperity and development of rural network culture, and the increasingly perfect rural digital governance system.

  Wang Mengmeng, deputy to the National People's Congress and first secretary of the Party Branch of Xikong Village, Chuzhou City, Anhui Province, has been rooted in the grassroots for 8 years after graduating from university.

For several years, "digital village" and "new infrastructure" have been the high-frequency words in her suggestions.

This year, she will continue to pay attention to the digital construction of rural areas, and will bring to the meeting two proposals to enhance grassroots governance capabilities through digitalization and support digital technology companies to participate in agricultural product innovation.

  Wang Mengmeng believes that digitalization will speed up the process of rural revitalization.

After the epidemic, the importance of digitalization to the whole society has become more prominent, and the rural areas should not be left behind.

She cited, for example, that one of the effects of digitalization on the new countryside is to bring new job opportunities. The sinking of digital technology has created new jobs, allowing young people who are migrant workers to return to their hometowns and find employment at their doorsteps.

  A few days before participating in the National People's Congress, Hua Qian, a representative of the National People's Congress in Wanshan Town, Wanshan District, Tongren City, Guizhou Province, was still doing live broadcasts.

The girl who returned to her hometown to start her own business opened up a “new path” for local agricultural products to sell Dashan through the Internet. The original ecological green products such as sweet potato chips, wild honey, rice noodles, and rice wine were moved to the dining table in the big city, the cinnabar in her hometown. Cultural and creative jewelry also allows more people in the city to place orders.

  Zhang Linshun, deputy to the National People’s Congress and secretary of the Party branch of Changkou Village, Jiangle County, Sanming City, Fujian Province, told reporters that with the improvement and rapid development of rural data and network capabilities, the management of agriculture, forestry, ecology, and tourism is urgently needed in rural economic development. Talents returning to the village can also achieve "online entrepreneurship", "work on the Internet" and "learn to be useful", allowing talents to return, which can greatly alleviate the shortage of talents in rural revitalization.

  In recent years, the sinking of digital technology has led to a sinking of employment.

According to the latest return home survey report jointly released by the Xinhua News Agency’s Outlook Think Tank and the Ant Group Research Institute, a large number of new digital occupations, such as cloud customer service and artificial intelligence trainers, have been transferred to lower-cost central and western counties; the sinking of the Internet is also in counties. The service industry has opened up the space for employment, attracting more and more young people to go home as courier brothers, takeaway brothers, shared bicycle operations, community group buying operations, and mobile payment local pushes.

  What other driving forces behind the "more lively Chinese counties and villages" are worth paying attention to?

How to make digitalization continue to serve the realization of rural revitalization?

Representative committee members and experts believe that it is necessary to continue to advance from the dimensions of digital governance, digital inclusive finance, and digital employment.

Data map: In recent years, Shanxi National Agricultural High-tech Zone (Shanxi Agricultural Valley) has continued to strengthen the core of "high-tech" development and play a "leading" role. The "head goose" effect in Shanxi's agricultural modernization and rural revitalization has become increasingly apparent.

Photo by Chen Jinhua

Improving digital governance capabilities, 

villagers also run errands less

  With the popularization of digitalization, the level of digital governance at the grassroots level has improved.

Especially in terms of lifestyle and public services, the gap between urban and rural areas has begun to narrow.

  Residents in more counties and villages in China can also enjoy using their mobile phones to do business without leaving their homes.

Statistics show that as of the end of May last year, more than 400 counties across the country have set up "digital citizen centers" on Alipay.

You don’t need to go to the community to pay social security, check the provident fund, and pension certification.

  Nowadays, in the Ali area of ​​Tibet, China's last connected to the National Grid, local residents can already pay electricity bills on Alipay before they are connected to the grid in 2020.

In a fifth-tier city called Xinyu in Jiangxi, the local government stopped the construction of a 200 million yuan civic center because the digital public services on mobile phones were already comprehensive enough.

  National People's Congress representative Wang Mengmeng said that during the epidemic prevention last year, the "two committees" of many villages registered and reported epidemic prevention information by hand. It took a lot of time and energy. If you are not careful, it is easy to make mistakes and work efficiency is relatively low.

Therefore, this year, she suggested that in the construction of digital villages, the grassroots digital governance capabilities should be improved, so that our people can enjoy the same government services as the people in the city, and run errands less or no errands.

  This year, Zhou Tongyu, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Industry and Commerce, will bring the proposal of "Accelerating the Bridging of the "Digital Divide" and Promoting the Balanced Development of the Digital Economy" to the two sessions.

She believes that the digital divide between China's urban and rural areas has transformed from the past differences in Internet penetration rates into differences in the use of digital services.

  Zhou Tongyu believes that the era of "same network and same speed" in China's urban and rural areas is coming, but there is still a clear gap between Chinese urban and rural residents in terms of obtaining information needed for life and work through the Internet and generating income from it.

She suggested summarizing the advanced experience and models of developed regions in the digital economy, and promoting them to other regions as a national "model".

  In an interview with reporters, Li Tie, an urban public policy expert, said that the digital economy plays a very important supporting role in bridging the gap in public services between counties and large cities in the central and western regions, especially developed regions, and can solve the problem of redistribution of spatial factors and resources. , Especially the long-distance transmission of public service resources.

Data map: The picture shows the pastoral complex project in Linyi, Shandong.

Gao Xiaoyu

Digital finance is expected to become an accelerator for rural revitalization

  Recently, in the No. 1 document of the central government, the development of digital inclusive finance in rural areas was first proposed, which pointed out the direction for the development of rural finance.

  Many experts believe that the sinking of digital technology has also brought the sinking of digital finance to counties and even rural areas, and provides capital turnover and expanded reproduction support for young people who return to their hometowns to start businesses, thereby contributing to the development of county and rural economy. Created more opportunities.

  Huang Yiping, deputy dean of the National Development Research Institute of Peking University, and his team have studied the development trend of digital finance in China for a long time. They found that mobile payment has broken the famous geographical dividing line "Hu Huanyong Line" that runs through the east and west, which means that finance is available in the east and the west. The gender gap is greatly reduced.

  Huang Yiping said that digital finance is still gradually transcending the uneven development of urban and rural areas.

"Under the current new situation in which poverty alleviation is shifting from poverty alleviation to rural revitalization, the new digital infrastructure represented by digital finance is expected to become an accelerator for rural revitalization."

  Jiangxi farmer Liu Yingfeng expanded the castle's land from a few hundred acres to thousands of acres through a satellite loan from the Internet Commercial Bank. The income from farming in her hometown is four to five times that of her and her husband working in the city.

  Nowadays, large rural grain growers across the country can now send the LBS positioning of the land to the satellite through their mobile phones. The online commercial bank determines the loan amount based on the information returned by the satellite, such as the land area, crop type, and crop maturity. The loan can also be borrowed. Pay back.

  National People's Congress representative Wang Mengmeng said that in the future, rural finance will serve for rural revitalization and agricultural development.

She was impressed that last summer, the flood situation in Anhui was in emergency, and 1.5 million business farmers applied for flood-fighting interest-free loans on their mobile phones.

"This small experiment in rural finance makes us believe that rural finance will be more inclusive due to digitalization in the future."

  Data map: Scenery of Tianjingyang in Caocun Town, Ruian, Zhejiang.

Photo by Fan Yubin

Digital technology creates new jobs to attract young people to return

  The sinking of digital technology brings new jobs, which is conducive to the formation of a virtuous circle of individual development and county and township development.

The return of young people will continue to boost the consumption power and economic vitality of China's county economy.

  Statistics show that young people in small towns have more and more opportunities to do customer service for large Internet companies and telecom operators at their doorsteps.

Companies such as WeChat, Ali, JD, Pinduoduo, China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile have outsourced manual customer service.

  Over the years as a village official in rural Anhui, Wang Mengmeng found in his research that more and more rural youths and young people in small towns have the willingness to return to their hometowns. At the same time, the question they ask the most is what they can do when they go home and what their hometown can do. What they offer.

  Wang Mengmeng said that this year, he will continue to call for the introduction and improvement of incentive measures in the proposals submitted by the National People's Congress, so as to guide returning entrepreneurs to new fields and new positions brought about by the sinking of digitalization.

"I hope that more support policies will be introduced at the national level to attract young people to return to their hometowns for employment and entrepreneurship, and to support rural revitalization."

  Qian Shuitu, member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Dean of the MBA School of Zhejiang Gongshang University, believes that with the popularization and application of the Internet and digital technology, new business formats represented by instant delivery, live broadcast e-commerce, and smart stores have opened up new market demands and gained The support of a large number of users has also created a continuous increase of new occupations and new positions.

These new forms of employment have large capacity, low entry and exit barriers, flexibility and part-time jobs, enabling more young people and even older county and rural entrepreneurs and participants to join them, becoming an important channel for absorbing employment.

  Qian Shuitu said that these people-centered changes are just the proper meaning of rural revitalization and new urbanization, and they also give China's county towns the opportunity to play an increasingly active role in the internal economic cycle.

  Li Tie said that without the support of various digital economies, it would be difficult for us to survive the moment of community closure and home isolation during the epidemic.

In the future, the energy of this economic model will be infinitely amplified.

"After all, the development of my country's urbanization also involves the participation of hundreds of millions of people. Among them, the mutual service of urban residents is an important area of ​​the development of the digital economy, which will obviously promote the continuous growth of the employment population."