A new push to increase development in rural areas through a digital rollout is expected to narrow the digital divide, revitalize villages and increase farmers’ incomes through improvements in agriculture.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a document in early May on the development of digital villages.
The document clarifies the target for 2025 as well completing the tasks listed in the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), which set forth that 5G communications should cover over 90 percent of nationwide villages, internet access to rise, online sales of agricultural products to increase and the urban-rural gap in digital technologies to decrease.
Nine targets in the document urge improvements to rural infrastructure, more assistance to prevent rural people from slipping back into poverty, promoting intelligent industries and other new industries, promoting digital culture and digital governance, and increasing basic services to all rural people, such as education, finance and information protection.
The “digital village” push is one of the strategies listed in the central government’s 2018 document on revitalizing rural areas.
Old Version
