Background
China released its 2026 No. 1 Central Document in February 2026, setting out the policy agenda for agricultural and rural development in the first year of the 15th Five‑Year Plan. As the central government’s first major policy statement each year, the document identifies priority areas for advancing agricultural and rural modernization, including addressing structural weaknesses in agriculture and rural areas, strengthening the agricultural sector’s foundations, improving urban–rural coordination, safeguarding food security, consolidating poverty alleviation outcomes, enhancing rural living conditions, and expanding farmers’ access to development opportunities.
These priorities reflect the transition from the outcomes of the 14th Five‑Year Plan (2021–2025) to the objectives of the 15th Five‑Year Plan (2026–2030). By 2025, China reported increases in grain production, rural incomes, and primary‑sector growth, yet continued to face challenges such as uneven urban–rural development, infrastructure gaps, environmental pressures, and constraints in agricultural science and technology. Against this backdrop, the 2026 No. 1 Central Document translates long-term national goals into actionable policy tasks for the year.
Enhancing grain production capacity and improving the quality and resilience of agriculture
The 2026 No. 1 Central Document sets out measures to reinforce China’s agricultural production base. It prioritizes stabilizing grain and oilseed output through improvements in farmland quality, seed varieties, machinery, and farming practices, while also promoting diversified food sources across crops, livestock, fisheries, and facility agriculture. The document highlights the need to improve the functioning of the “vegetable basket” system, improve the quality and safety of agricultural products, and expand the supply of high quality and specialty food items. It also calls for more efficient use of resources through food loss reduction and better alignment between production and consumption trends.
A second major focus is the protection and sustainable use of arable land. The document outlines stricter measures to safeguard the quantity and quality of farmland, including tighter controls on land conversion, targeted remediation of degraded or underutilized land, and the expansion of high standard farmland construction. It also promotes ecological protection through black soil conservation, saline alkali land improvement, and the orderly withdrawal of farmland in ecologically sensitive areas. In parallel, the document underscores the need to strengthen disaster prevention and mitigation systems—ranging from improved monitoring and early warning to upgrades in water conservancy, drainage, and emergency response capacity—to reduce agricultural losses from extreme weather and biological hazards.
The document further stresses the role of science and technology and the importance of integrating domestic production with international markets. It calls for advancing innovation in key areas such as breeding, intelligent agricultural equipment, digital agriculture, and biotechnology, while improving the transfer of research outcomes and strengthening talent development. In terms of trade, the document encourages diversification of import sources, support for competitive agricultural exporters, and stronger regulatory oversight to ensure orderly cross border flows. Together, these measures aim to build a more resilient, efficient, and technologically driven agricultural system capable of supporting long term food security and rural development.
Consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation achievements
The 2026 No. 1 Central Document sets out measures to prevent a resurgence of poverty by establishing a stable and institutionalized support system. It calls for maintaining continuity in post‑poverty‑alleviation policies, strengthening local government responsibility, and ensuring that basic public services—such as compulsory education, healthcare, housing safety, and access to safe drinking water—remain secure for vulnerable groups. The document also highlights the need for coordinated policy tools, combining development‑oriented assistance with social protection measures, and ensuring stable funding from central and local governments to sustain long‑term support.
A second priority is improving the accuracy and timeliness of monitoring and assistance. The document promotes an“early identification, early intervention, early support” mechanism to detect households at risk of falling back into poverty. It calls for clearer eligibility criteria, more responsive village‑level monitoring, faster inclusion of at‑risk households into support programs, and stronger data sharing across government departments. Dynamic management is emphasized to ensure that households exit support once risks are resolved and are re‑included promptly if new vulnerabilities emerge.
The document also seeks to strengthen the foundations for sustainable development in formerly impoverished and less‑developed regions. It promotes more effective industrial and employment support, including upgrading local industries, improving the use of assistance funds, revitalizing underutilized assets, and expanding organized labor mobility and public‑interest jobs. For less‑developed areas, the document calls for differentiated support through targeted fiscal transfers, major infrastructure investment, talent programs, and enhanced east‑west cooperation. Continued village‑level assistance and improved governance mechanisms aim to reinforce local capacity and support relocated and rural communities in pursuing more stable livelihoods and long‑term development.
Actively promoting stable income growth for farmers
The 2026 No. 1 Central Document introduces measures intended to support farmers’ income security, particularly by stabilizing returns from grain production. It calls for improving price and income support mechanisms through minimum purchase prices, targeted subsidies, and expanded agricultural insurance coverage. The document also highlights the need for better market services, including improved monitoring, information dissemination, and coordination between market based procurement and policy reserves. Measures to strengthen fiscal transfers and inter provincial benefit sharing seek to improve compensation mechanisms for major grain producing regions and help maintain stable incentives for farmers to grow staple crops.
A second priority is to expand rural income sources by developing competitive county level industries and promoting deeper integration of agriculture with processing, services, tourism, and e commerce. The document encourages the upgrading of local specialty industries, the expansion of value added processing, and the development of green and branded agricultural products. It also supports the growth of rural e commerce and cold chain logistics, as well as the integration of agriculture, culture, and tourism to diversify rural livelihoods. Complementary measures include strengthening the forestry and grassland economy and improving planning and oversight to avoid inefficient or speculative investment in county level projects.
The document further underscores the importance of improving employment quality and expanding rural consumption. It calls for stabilizing migrant workers’ employment through enterprise support policies, large scale skills training, and enhanced public services for both outbound and returning workers. Stronger wage protection and the promotion of rural artisanship aim to improve long term career prospects. On the consumption side, the document promotes upgrading rural commercial infrastructure, expanding access to high quality goods such as new energy vehicles and smart appliances, and strengthening market regulation to curb counterfeit products. These measures are expected to contribute to expanding rural market activity and to reinforcing the income–consumption cycle that supports rural revitalization.
Building Beautiful and Liveable Rural Areas
To support the development of rural areas that are attractive andfunctional for residents, the document urges efforts to coordinate and improve the rural spatial layout, enhance infrastructure construction and maintenance, coordinate the provision of basic public services at the county level, promote holistic ecological conservation and restoration, continue initiatives aimed at improving rural social practices, and build safe and law-based villages.
The document outlines a comprehensive approach to improving rural development by strengthening spatial planning, infrastructure, and public services. It calls for more scientific and locally responsive rural territorial planning, region‑based implementation, and improved land governance to support liveable and well‑functioning villages. Parallel efforts aim to upgrade rural infrastructure—including water and power supply, transport networks, logistics systems, housing, and digital connectivity—while establishing long‑term maintenance mechanisms to ensure reliability and sustainability. The document also emphasizes county‑level coordination of basic public services to narrow urban–rural gaps, focusing on optimizing school layouts, expanding shared educational resources, upgrading medical and health insurance systems, addressing workforce shortages, and improving elderly care, childcare, social assistance, and support for vulnerable groups.
At the same time, the document advances integrated ecological protection and restoration to support green and low‑carbon rural development. Despite progress in waste management, sewage treatment, and environmental governance by 2025, persistent challenges such as agricultural non‑point pollution and degraded water bodies require continued action. The document therefore promotes sustained improvement of rural living environments, tailored wastewater treatment, waste reduction at the source, and greener agricultural practices. It also calls for strengthened ecosystem conservation and more coordinated efforts to protect key natural areas, prevent land degradation, and enhance the resilience of rural ecosystems as part of long‑term sustainable development.
Institutional Innovation: Reforming Systems to Support Rural Revitalization
To strengthen institutional innovation, the document outlines several areas for reform, including the accelerated improvement of a modern agricultural management system, more effective utilization and revitalizationof rural resources, improvements to investment and financing mechanisms that support rural revitalization, and measures to facilitate the two-way flow of production factors between urban and rural areas.
A modern agricultural management system constitutes the organizational foundation for advancing agricultural and rural modernization. The document’s call to “accelerate the development of a modern agricultural management system” reflects the need to address institutional factors affecting agricultural production. Drawing on 2025 data, China had approximately 3 million family farms, 2.2 million farmers’ cooperatives, and 1 million agricultural socialized service organizations. While the number of business entities has expanded, many remain small in scale and limited in operational capacity. The measures outlined in the document therefore aim to shift from expanding the number of business entities to improving their quality and performance, advancing appropriately scaled agricultural operations and promoting the effective integration of smallholder farmers with modern agriculture, enhancing the role of modern agricultural service centers and extending services from single‑point offerings to full‑process support, thereby reducing production costs for smallholder farmers and facilitating their participation in modern agricultural value chains.
The document calls for innovating rural revitalization financing mechanisms to address persistent funding gaps. In 2025, China’s outstanding agriculture related loans reached RMB 50 trillion, yet the financing gap for rural revitalization remained above RMB 10 trillion, underscoring the need to broaden financing channels. To close this gap, the document proposes expanding fiscal support, leveraging government bonds, strengthening fiscal–financial coordination, improving rural credit systems, and encouraging responsible private investment, while tightening oversight to ensure that funds are used effectively.
The document identifies the two way flow of production factors between urban and rural areas as central to integrated urban–rural development. In 2025, 100 million rural migrants obtained urban residency, and the total scale of factor flows reached RMB 5 trillion, yet significant institutional barriers remained. The document therefore aims to address these barriersby adjusting policies related to population mobility, protecting land related rights for rural residents moving to cities, attracting more talent to rural areas, and expanding youth and professional support programs to strengthen the rural workforce.
Reference:
1. In‑Depth Analysis of China’s 2026 No. 1 Central Document
2. China outlines plans for agricultural modernization, rural revitalization
Original Chinese Version (Full Text)
