On the Farmers’ Role Differentiation and the Effective Implementation of Rural Vitalization Strategy—A Perspective from the Targets, Process and Evaluation of Policy Implementation

Wang Bo & Zhu Yuchun

Abstract: During the historical period of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and striving for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, the 19th National Congress of the CPC put forward the significant deployment of rural vitalization strategy, drawing a great blueprint for the prospect of China’s “three issues” of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers and acting as an important focus of these “three issues” in the future. This paper discussed the relationships between farmers’ role differentiation and five objectives of the rural vitalization strategy on the basis of farmers’ role differentiation and conversion in the process of agriculture and countryside modernization and the interpretation of farmers’role differentiation and the rural vitalization strategy. Based on the logical relationships between farmers’ role differentiation and the rural vitalization strategy, we discuss the effective implementation of the rural vitalization strategy in terms of its targets,processes and effectiveness evaluations. We also propose that the implementation of the rural vitalization strategy can only be implemented when farmers are given the first priority as strategy subjects, farmers’ wills are respected in the implementation process,and farmers’ satisfaction is highlighted in the strategy implementation effectiveness evaluations.

Keywords: Rural Vitalization Strategy; Farmers’ roles; Differentiation; Strategy Implementation

1. Introduction

An effective solution to the “three issues” of agriculture, countryside, and farmers has been a must for each session of government in China,an important strategic highlight of full-spectrum development in China, and a long-term focus of academia. With the progress of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in China, and sizing up the trend of the national situation and the new historical backdrop, the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council put forward the rural vitalization strategy in the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, based on China’s current national conditions and major contradictions. The strategy requires us to attach emphasis to the development of agriculture and the countryside and to meet the 20-characters objective of building rural areas with thriving businesses,pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity. This shows that the Central Committee of the CPC with General Secretary Xi Jinping at its core will still take the “three issues” of agriculture, countryside,and farmers as an important part of its work. This strategy is another important measure to accelerate the development of agriculture, countryside, and farmers after the strategy of building new country sides proposed in 2005 and embodies the guideline of the Central Committee of the CPC to give highlight to the development of agriculture and countryside. The principal contradiction facing Chinese society is now the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life, after socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. However, this kind of imbalance and inadequacy has shown the unbalanced development of rural and urban areas and the inadequate development of country sides. To narrow and finally eradicate the unbalanced development between rural and urban areas and the inadequate development of country sides is a problem that must be resolved in the process of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, which relates to China’s full-spectrum development and China’s goal to be a modernized, strong country. This is also a new historic mission to the rural vitalization strategy granted by new national conditions, development features and major social contradictions.

The implementing of the rural vitalization strategy is of time significance, which aims to accelerate the modernization of agriculture and rural areas by building sound urban-rural integration development mechanisms and policy systems, to enrich the rural residents, in particular those of rural agriculture, and bring rural and urban residents together to enter a moderately prosperous society in all aspects. However, the rural vitalization strategy has so far been a macroscopic strategic concept delivered by the government. The concrete development mechanisms and policy systems of the strategy have remained in the budding stage. Therefore, how to effectively promote the rural vitalization strategy has become a scientific problem needing to be furthered. To deeply analyze this scientific problem, there is an inevitable problem about the farmers’ role differentiation in modern society. It is the process of farmers’ role differentiation that has caused the failure of some policies related to the countryside development in the phases of implementation, so as to bring several obstacles and challenges to the development of rural society, such as the lack of the subject of the collective activities of public affairs governance,aging and hollow problems of rural population, loss of the poverty alleviation efficiency, and rural land left and uncultivated, etc. Effective promotion of the rural vitalization strategy is a significant part of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and an effective approach to stimulate the all-around development of agriculture and country sides. However, adequate attention should be paid to these development problems and social phenomenon in the current rural areas caused by farmers’ role differentiation, so that the implementation of the strategy can be conducted to directly meet the target and lower the deviation of the strategy effectiveness.

This paper discussed how to effectively carry out the rural vitalization strategy against the backdrop of deep differentiation of farmers’ roles and tries to shed light on several policy-making suggestions in terms of targets, processes and effectiveness evaluations of the strategy implementation on the basis of the rural vitalization strategy proposed in the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Part of China and of several development problems and social phenomenon of the country sides brought about by current farmers’role differentiation and the inner relations between them.

2. Explanation to the rural vitalization strategy and farmers’ role differentiation

2.1 Explanation of the rural vitalization strategy

In October 2017, General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the implementation of the rural vitalization strategy in the report if the 19th National Congress of the CPC and stated that issues related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers are fundamental problems concerning our national economy and people’s livelihood and the effective solution to “three issues” of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers must be the highlight of the work of the whole party. The report of the 19th National Congress of the CPC also put forward the objective of the rural vitalization strategy of building rural areas with thriving businesses, pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity.

Among these five items of the objective of rural vitalization strategy, there have been several inner logic relations. These inner logic relations show distinct functions and complementarity. In the five goals of building rural areas with thriving businesses, pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity, building rural areas with prosperity is the core objective. Since China’s reform and opening up, personal income of rural and urban residents has been rapidly increased, but with the increasing growth of this absolute income, the income gap between rural and urban areas has been widened.However, the dual structure of rural and urban areas has worsened this income disparity. Therefore,narrowing the income gap between rural and urban areas and building rural areas with prosperity,the core of the rural vitalization strategy, is an important channel to break the constraints of the dual structure between rural and urban areas and to bring both rural and urban residents together to have access to the moderately prosperous society.Building rural areas with thriving businesses is a major approach to help rural residents increase their incomes. By integrating the development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, income increases are no longer a theoretical topic. A series of new businesses have emerged as internet technologies have been introduced and conventional industries are gradually becoming integrated, so that internet technologies bring about the possibility to stimulate the information technology application of agriculture and country sides to form the modernized agriculture featured by information services and promoted by e-commerce. Building rural areas with thriving businesses and prosperity is the precondition of effective governance. There are some facts related to public affairs governance of China’s rural areas, such as difficulties in collective actions in the countryside, inadequate supply of public goods, worsened living conditions caused by damage of public pond resources and abandoned public production infrastructures. However, the cause of these facts lies in the widely lower living conditions of rural residents and the limited channels available to increase personal incomes, so that when it comes to the option between collective and individual reason, residents prefer to choose the individual options, which traps the whole countryside into difficulties regarding collective actions. Therefore, the prosperity of rural residents and the thriving businesses of rural areas are directly related to the effective governance of the countryside. Prosperity and effective governance are the foundation of building rural areas with social etiquette and civility. Social etiquette and civility in the countryside are the embodiment of spiritual civilization in rural areas. The pursuit of this kind of spiritual civilization relies on a foundation of prosperity and effective governance. Prosperous economic life and well-regulated countryside governance can provide a solid material foundation to farmers’ spiritual lives, promoting the growth of farmers’ spiritual life and enhancing the social etiquette and civility of rural areas. Prosperity,effective governance, and social etiquette and civility are the important elements needed to build rural areas with pleasant living environments. Pleasant living environments, a social living condition and a sustainable development concept, contribute to the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature while prosperity of farmers, effective governance of country sides, and social etiquette and civility in rural areas are the important guarantees of this kind of living condition and development concept.

2.2 Explanation of farmers’ role differentiation

The concept of “farmer” should be defined clearly before discussing farmers’ role differentiation.In China, the word “Nong Min” or “farmer” has been used since ancient times. Before the 20th century, several words were applied to define the laborers working in the field of agriculture, such as Nong Fu, Nong Hu, Nong Jia, Nong Ren, Nong Ding, Zhuang Hu, Zhuang Jia Han, which generally were the names used to address this occupation.In the modern social context, when it comes to“farmer,” it refers not only to an occupation, but also other impressions such as social hierarchy, status, a community organization method, a cultural mode,a psychological structure, and existence situation,etc. Farmers have not only been referred to as laborers working in the field of agriculture, but also become a group of social participants enjoying some common features in terms of occupation, status,community organization method, cultural mode,psychological structure and existence situations. In accordance with statistics, the concept of “farmer”has been defined in three different levels in terms of the partition of occupations, household registrations,and living areas. There are obvious differences remaining in the statistical subject, based on three different levels of statistic data. This paper focuses on the rural population acting as the subject of rural areas and is closely related to the development of rural areas. Therefore, “farmer” in this paper is defined based on the partition of household registration and refers to rural laborers who should traditionally engage in agricultural production.

Since the reform and opening up, with the continuous growth of the economy in rural areas and the gradual progress of urbanization, the traditional farmer started to be differentiated, whose social roles in the market economy have been deeply converted.The role conversion reveals the change in farmers’occupations and other results caused by such as diversity of income sources, binary living areas, and market-oriented mindsets, etc. In terms of the change in occupations, the role of current farmers has not been defined as the traditional agricultural laborers only working in agricultural production. Based on the types of occupation, the current farmers can be divided into three categories, namely farmers fully working in agricultural production, farmers engaging in both agricultural and non-agricultural production, and farmers fully participating in nonagricultural production. In terms of the income source, farmers’ income today has not only relied on the surplus of agricultural production but on an abundance of channels to gain income. Those income sources are consistent with the occupational forms of farmers, which can be generally categorize as the income from full agricultural production,income from combined agricultural and nonagricultural production, and income from full nonagricultural production. Moreover, in terms of living areas, some farmers today have not lived in rural areas for over a whole year. However, they have had living areas in both cities and countrysides, but they have not had a permanent living area. So, there is a binary living mode coming into being. Based on the strict category of living areas, farmers can be divided into three types, namely ones only living in rural areas, ones living in both rural and urban areas, and ones living only in urban areas. In terms of thoughts and mindsets, farmers today have not only pursued a dream of being a simple farmer who can feed his or her belly, lead a constrained life, and work on a small patch of land. However,they want to be a modernized farmer who is able to gradually engage in informalization and market liberalization. The farmers’ role differentiation and conversion, resulting from the change in occupation,income sources, and thoughts and mindsets, and the extension of living areas, bring deep impact on the development of China’s agriculture and country sides.

The evolution of China’s polices on “three issues” of agriculture, rural areas and farmers go along with the differentiation and conversion of farmers’ roles. In the development of a series of polices, policy-makers have gradually realized the role of farmers in the market economy. The farmer,the subject of agriculture and rural areas and the key to the development of agriculture and rural areas, is the indispensable factor in the process of implementing any policy related to the “three issues”of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, playing a significant decisive role. The adaptation of policies to the agriculture and country sides are determined by their adaptation to farmers. It is only based on full knowledge about the farmers’ role in modern society that we can make our polices more targeted and more adaptable to the current development of agriculture and rural areas. With no exception to this strategy, the rural vitalization strategy plays a significant role to help urban and rural areas combined to have access to a moderately prosperous society. Policy-making of the rural vitalization strategy must take into consideration China’s current farmers’ role differentiation, so that the policy can better adapt to the development of agriculture and the countryside and better vitalize country sides.

3. Relations between rural vitalization and farmers’ role differentiation

Rural vitalization strategy is a significant part of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and building a great modern socialist country. It is a new strategic deployment delivered by the central government to tackle “three issues”of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, against the new historical backdrop. However, facing the modern farmers’ role differentiation, the implementation of the rural vitalization strategy must take into consideration how to motivate the initiative, activism, and creativity of farmers to be the subject and beneficiary to better participate in rural vitalization. Therefore, clear knowledge about the inner logic relations between the five objectives of the rural vitalization strategy and farmers’ role differentiation has remained of deep theoretical significance and implication to help implement the rural vitalization strategy, bring prosperity to agriculture, the rural areas and farmers, build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and fully construct a great modern socialist country.

Building rural areas with prosperity is the priority among the five objectives of the rural vitalization strategy and also a target based on rural social development. The major difficulties facing rural social development are not things related to meals, clothing, accommodations, and transportation but problems related to incomes. Lower income levels, single income sources, the widening urbanrural gap are the current major factors affecting the prosperity of rural residents. To help rural residents lead a prosperous life, we need to improve their income levels, develop more income sources and make diversified measures. We need upgrades not only to the quantity but also the quality of incomes.Against the backdrop of deep differentiation of farmers’ roles, in order to meet this target, we need to have a clear mind about questions of what kind of farmers should be assisted and how to bring those farmers prosperity. There are three types of farmers’income sources, income fully from agricultural production, income from both agricultural and nonagricultural production, and income fully from nonagricultural production. Among these three types,farmers gaining income fully from agricultural production have remained at the lower level of income in terms of quantity and quality. This type of farmer is the poverty-stricken population in rural areas. The farmers gaining income fully from non-agricultural production have gained a better level of income than ones earning money fully from agricultural production, in terms of quantity and quality. Those farmers haven’t engaged in agricultural production and have generally left rural life. Some of them have even settled down in cities and retained rural living places only for the consideration of future risks in life. Farmers gaining money from both agricultural and non-agricultural production are set between fully agricultural incomes and fully non-agricultural incomes. These farmers gain better income than ones gaining money fully from agricultural production in terms of quantity, but gain lower-level income than ones from fully non-agricultural production in terms of quality. Those farmers always conduct agricultural production in the busy farming season and engage in other work during the slack season. Against the backdrop of the deep differentiation of farmers’roles, the importance of helping rural residents gain prosperity is to help those farmers whose income remains low in both quantity and quality. In terms of farmers gaining money from both agricultural and non-agricultural production, we need to gradually stimulate the increase in the income quality under the premise of ensuring the stable growth of their income quantity. It is under the premise of equal increases of both income quantity and quality that the objective to build a rural areas with prosperity can be realized.

building new rural areas

Thriving businesses is an objective related to rural economic growth and an important condition to promote farmers’ prosperous lives. To realize this objective, we need to know who we should rely on to build rural areas with thriving businesses. The long-term development delay in the rural economy results mainly from the development delays in rural industries. The major reason for the development delays of rural industries is the convergence of rural industrial structure itself and the similarity between the rural secondary industry and the urban industry.To realize rural economic growth and thriving businesses, we can take the path of agricultural industrialization as the growth engine and make most of the comparative advantages of agriculture itself to conduct professional agricultural production.To meet this goal, the subject is still the farmers.Farmers’ cooperatives and the entrepreneurship of farmers returning to country sides from cities, a frequent phenomenon in the current rural economic society, are important channel to realize the current rural economic prosperity and growth by making full use of farmers’ own advantages and are also the pioneering exploration of farmers enjoying the mindset of the market economy to realize thriving businesses in rural areas. Building rural areas with thriving businesses needs the efforts of farmers themselves and favorable polices and capital support from the country to give the first priority to the development of agriculture and the countryside in terms of polices, systems and investments.However, against the backdrop of farmers’ role differentiation, we should not blindly conduct any work but drawn down targets and focus support to those rural enterprises that can really develop rural industries and promote thriving businesses in the countryside. Beside we should help those farmers who are willing to risk entrepreneurship and have the vision of a market economy to build stronger and better rural enterprises. Therefore, in the situation of inner differentiation happening in farmers, there is a reality problem affecting the effectiveness of policy implementation which is to find those farmers who have the real ability to promote the thriving rural industries and have the desire to engage in entrepreneurship instead of those false entrepreneurs who just take advantage of the development of rural industries to obtain the capital delivered by the government. To tackle this problem, we need to take into consideration the change of farmers’ thoughts caused by farmers’ role differentiation and the impact of the market economy on farmers’ economic behaviors. Farmers returning to country sides from cities and talents in the rural areas are the subject of rural entrepreneurship, most of whom have been equipped with thoughts and awareness of the market economy and had the ability to accurately seize trends and opportunities of the market. They also have the potential to engage in entrepreneurship.These farmers are the subjects who can promote the rural thriving businesses and are the target of policy support from our government.

Effective governance, an objective based on the political domain, is an important part to realize national governance modernization. Due to farmers’role differentiation, China’s rural governance has gained complexity. In particular, as urbanization has been deepened, more farmers have left the rural areas so that the rural areas are losing the features of “countryside” while presenting more features of“towns.” This change has brought some problems such as difficulties in collective actions, inadequate supply of public goods, and heavy damage on the public pond resources. Therefore, the problem of“hollow” country sides has become more serious.Public infrastructure in the rural areas including schools, clinics, stores, etc. have declined. People’s living condition has been worsened. Due to the change of farmers’ roles, more and more country sides have turned tranquil, In the condition of severe differentiation of farmers’ roles, to cope with those problems facing the governance of rural areas such as fragments of governance, poor spontaneous force,loss of social public awareness and uncertainty of development, etc. is the key to meeting the effective governance of country sides. The key to solving these problems lies in farmers. Farmers have always been the subject of the countryside. Without farmers, rural areas cannot be the real countryside.Therefore, farmers are both the subject and target of the governance of rural areas. However, as the binary structure between urban and rural areas has been broken and the process of urbanization has been emphasized, the current farmers are not the laborers of agricultural production whose freedom was constrained in earlier times. There is obvious differentiation in farmers’ occupations and living areas. Many rural migrant populations are living in the marginal areas between rural and urban areas, becoming a margin population of both cities and country sides. Meanwhile, left-behind senior citizens, women, and children have become the subject of rural populations. The change of the subject of rural populations has caused, to some extent, the loss and weakness of the rural governance which makes the countryside governance more and more complicated. In order to have effective governance,based on these changes, we need to take into full consideration the differentiation of farmers’ roles and implement targeted policies to resolve these problems.

Building rural areas with social etiquette and civility, an objective based on the culture, is the spiritual pillar of building new socialist villages and the major aspect of realizing the five objectives of the rural vitalization strategy. Social etiquette and civility in the rural area is the spirit of the countryside. To shape the sound etiquette and civility of the rural areas there needs to be a strong underpinning vehicle. Farmers are the subject of the country sides and also the original vehicle to shape the social etiquette and civility of the rural areas. Farmers are the original force to push forward the sustainable development of social etiquette and civility of the rural areas. Now, China is in a transition of socialism. Due to the differentiation of farmers’ roles, farmers have gained stronger social mobility and more opportunities to exchange with other cultures and thoughts, to allow several alien cultures to penetrate into rural areas and have some impact on the original social culture of the country sides. This type of impact has gradually reduced a series of uncivilized rural conventions, such as a vulgar culture, social stereotypes, and ignorance,etc. However, to be honest, although it has broken some original uncivilized rural conventions, the penetration of these alien cultures has brought about some negative impacts such as loss of honesty, loss of ethics, and money-worshiping that are frequently seen in the current rural culture. Facing the coalition between the alien and original cultures and thoughts,how to take the essence and discard the dross has become one of the difficulties of building rural areas with social etiquette and civility. Moreover,the mobility of farmers has caused a brain drain in the rural areas, resulting in a shortage of talents.However, it is this group of rural talents that are the rural elites who can set an example for others, make contributions to the community, and express their own ideas. They are the major group to shape sound etiquette and civility of the rural areas. However,as the role differentiation and social mobility of farmers have been deepened, economic construction in the rural areas has reduced the importance of talents for the traditional culture. The conversion of rural cultural talents has led to the shortage of talents and new talents born in the country sides are been adopting quickly by cities. So, this shortage of cultural talent is another difficulty facing rural areas to build social etiquette and civility. Therefore, in the current development of rural-urban integration,the effort paid for building rural areas with social etiquette and civility is to leave core socialist values rooted in the country sides, so as to make honesty,virtue and science the mainstream value of rural culture. This effort is also intended to cultivate new farmers, carry forward traditional virtues, and inherit fine family conventions, which is the core of building rural areas with social etiquette and civility.The subject of meeting the objective of cultural construction is still farmers.

building rural areas with pleasant living environments

Building rural areas with pleasant living environments, a vitalizing objective based on the ecological environment, is a strategic target to promote harmony between humans and nature, and to highly harmonize humans and nature. Beautiful and livable countryside construction is the upgraded version of the new socialist countryside and the target to promote the construction of ecological civilizations in rural areas and of beautiful China.In the current society, the fundamental consensus and value reached are that a beautiful countryside must come from a beautiful China, which is also the reason to build rural areas with pleasant living environments. Currently, to build a countryside with pleasant living environments, we still face several difficulties, such as poor infrastructure, unpleasant living environments, unreasonable housing layouts,and so on. The cause of these difficulties is closely related to the gradual changing of agriculture and countryside resulting from the differentiation of farmers’ roles in the process of modernization.In the transformation of traditional agriculture into modern agriculture, the wide use of modern production factors such as fertilizers, pesticides, and fodders leave agricultural non-point source pollution in a serious situation that makes people worry about the quality and production environment of agricultural products. The inappropriate disposal of agricultural wastes, including straw, scum, livestock excrement, etc., worsens the ecological system of the countryside and pollutes the living areas of residents. The intensive transformation of the traditional countryside into a modern countryside makes memories of idyllic pastoral fade away and hard to be remained. Many traditional villages have vanished or been renovated upside down, becoming defective products with little urban modernization and little rural simplicity. The number of green mountains is declining, while the clean streams are being polluted. The original profile of the countryside has disappeared, and the sense of garden and home has waned. The transformation of traditional farmers into modern ones witnesses the obvious changes of the thoughts and mindsets of farmers. The awareness of market and consumption has become the mainstream. The amount of consumption surplus wastes has been increased,since the consumption potential of farmers has been gradually released and the consumption level has been upgraded increasingly. The wide use of large durable consumer goods has created worn villages that cannot bear the heavy load on the infrastructure.To overcome these ecological problems and build livable villages, we need to motivate farmers’activism and self-reliance. Only when we bring the benefits of building such rural areas to farmers, can we continue the tide of building rural areas with pleasant living environments.

4. Discussion of the effective implementation of the rural vitalization strategy

The differentiation and change of farmers’roles are an inevitable trend of the modernization of China’s agriculture and countryside. This trend will be deepened as the modernization drive of rural areas has been pushed forward. The rural vitalization strategy has been carried out under such social reality and environment of country sides. To realize the objective of building rural areas with thriving businesses, pleasant living environments,social etiquette and civility, effective governance,and prosperity, the differentiation and change of farmers’ roles must be included in the analysis framework of making strategies and polices, to lower to the least impact the social instability and conflicts of policy implementation resulting from farmers’ role differentiation. To appropriately handle the friction between farmers’ role differentiation and the rural vitalization strategy and effectively push forward the rural vitalization strategy, the key lies in the harmony between the policy implementation and the farmers. We need to highlight the farmeroriented concept, take into consideration the farmers’thoughts and satisfy farmers’ demands and make polices implemented based on farmers’ needs and provide farmers with the most favorable conditions of the polices. Based on this policy and the former arguments, this paper further discusses the effective implementation of the rural vitalization strategy in terms of three aspects; the implementation targets,implementation process, and evaluation systems.

4.1 Farmer-oriented concept of the strategy implementation targets

The implementation targets of the rural vitalization strategy directly relate to the path and the result of the strategy implementation. The implementation target of the rural vitalization strategy is farmers instead of rural areas and agriculture. As the subject of agricultural production,countryside development, and rural construction,farmers are the focus and beneficiaries of all policy implementation of the “three issues” of agriculture,rural areas and farmers, and farmers will determine the success of such polices. Therefore, any policy regarding the “three issues” of agriculture,countryside, and farmers should regard farmers as the targets. Today the differentiation of farmers’ role has become more severe, but the focus of realizing the five objectives still lies in farmers. The target and the subject of building rural areas with thriving businesses, pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity should be taken into consideration, when concrete polices of the rural vitalization strategy are being developed. Building rural areas with prosperity is aimed to bring prosperity to those farmers who have low-quality incomes, generally depending on agricultural as their income source.Therefore, to realize the rural vitalization in terms of income, we need to help this group of farmers gain wealth. To build rural areas with thriving businesses,we need to rely on those farmers who have acquired the awareness of the market, accurately seized the trends of the market, and enjoyed the real ability to conduct innovation and entrepreneurship. This group of farmers are talents of the village or those returning to the villages from cities where they have gained abundant fruits and are ready to start businesses in the countryside. To build rural areas with pleasant living environments, social etiquette and civility, and effective governance, we must depend on farmers living in the rural areas for the long term. They are the beneficiaries of the effective governance of public affairs, rural social etiquette and civility, and the pleasant living environments. In the implementation of the rural vitalization strategy,only when we effectively combine the farmers’ role differentiation and the relative polices, so as to take into consideration what farmers really demand, can the rural vitalization strategy meet the demands of farmers.

4.2 Full respect for farmers’ will in the strategy implementation

The differentiation of farmers’ roles should be taken into consideration in the implementation of the rural vitalization strategy. We need to emphasize the will and demand of different groups of farmers,to avoid the deviation of policy implementation and improve the targeting of policy implementation.The deviation of the policy implementation has been caused by policy implementation subjects who hardly consider the wish and demand of farmers.The subject only pursues the personal benefits and ignores the real situation of the implementation targets and thus derails the policy expectation objectives. Such situations were and have been found, more or less, in the implementation of policies of the “three issues” of agriculture, countryside,and farmers. For example, farmers pursued equity and justice in the countryside in the implementation of households enjoying the minimum living guarantee but someone took the name of agricultural cooperatives to take capital favoring farmers and delivered by governments. The subject of the “caseby-case” approval system failed in the process of public affairs governance of rural areas. These problems happened because we ignored the will of farmers or lacked field inspections in the process of policy making and implementation, so the final target of the policy implementation was derailed.As the differentiation of farmers’ role has been more severe today, the heterogeneity of farmers has become stronger and stronger and the demands of the policy has presented differences. How to better meet the will and demands of various farmers after the roles’ differentiation is the most significant in the implementation of the rural vitalization strategy. The key to solving the problem is to accurately identify the roles of different farmer groups and effectively sense the strong will of farmers. Only when we learn about the demands of different farmer groups after differentiation and really meet the real needs of farmers, can we bring the biggest benefits to farmers, lower the deviation of policy implementation and improve the implementation effectiveness of the rural vitalization strategy.

4.3 Evaluation of strategy implementation effectiveness based on the satisfaction of farmers

The evaluation of implementation effectiveness of the rural vitalization strategy should be based on farmers’ benefits and satisfaction. Over the past years, the Chinese government has attached great importance to the “three issues” of agriculture,rural areas, and farmers, and released a series of policies favoring and supporting farmers. However,the evaluation of implementation effectiveness has ignored the indicator of farmers’ satisfaction. It is necessary to include the farmers’ satisfaction into the policy evaluation, as the modernization drive of agriculture and country sides has been deepened,the differentiation of farmers’ role has become severe, and heterogeneity has been strengthened.The farmers’ role differentiation brings about not only the change of income structures, living areas,and thoughts, but also different demands of various group. Effectively meeting the policy demands of various farmer groups can directly determine our realization of the grand objective of rural vitalization in this historical period to secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era. To solve these problems, we must take into full consideration the policy demands of each farmer group to make the policy best meet the will of farmers. For example,through what kind of policy mix can we increase the income of farmer groups of various differentiation to reach common prosperity? What kind of industrial optimization policies should be implemented to realize the upgrading of agricultural industries in order to build rural areas with thriving businesses?How to promote public affairs governance and build sound rural conventions? How to build livable ecological environments to meet the requirements of effective governance, social etiquette and civility and pleasant living environments. Farmers, the driving force of rural vitalization, are the hard core of realizing the five objectives of rural vitalization.Only when we ensure that all farmers can gain the biggest benefits delivered by policies and are willing to be engaged in rural vitalization with all their enthusiasm and activism can we guarantee the long-term effectiveness and the quality of policy implementation.

5. Conclusion

On the basis of the differentiation and changes of farmers’ role in the modern society, and based on the discussion of the inner logic relations between farmers’ role differentiation and implementation of the rural vitalization strategy, this paper has further discussed the effective development of the rural vitalization strategy in terms of the target,implementation process, and evaluation of the strategy. In this historical period we can secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era. As the economy, society, culture, and systems of China’s rural areas have further developed, farmers’heterogeneity has become more and more obvious and the differentiation of farmers’ roles have been deepened. This role differentiation has had some impact on the effective implementation of policies related to the “three issues” of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. While socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the major contradictions facing our society has changed from the gap in the primary stage between the evergrowing material and cultural needs of the people and the low level of social production into the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. The change of agriculture, countryside,and farmers is of great significance, directly related to our goal to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and a great modern socialist country.Therefore, it is important to include the farmers’ role differentiation in policy-making factors. Only when we present farmer-oriented concepts in the policy implementation target, respect farmers’ will in the process of policy implementation, and highlight farmers’ satisfaction in the evaluation of policy, can we stimulate farmers’ activism and enthusiasm to take part in rural vitalization, ensure highly effective implementation of the rural vitalization strategy, and finally reach the expectation objectives.