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The shocking cultural poverty of China's rural areas should be touching the nerve of the government.

Many parts of the countryside were left as cultural wastelands when government leaders at various levels developed their fixation with GDP-related development targets.

The cooing of chickens and barking of dogs is the only music for many farmers and herdsmen, who begin work at sunrise and return at sunset.

China has done more to reduce poverty than most other countries.

Gone are the days when sharp stomachs meant short graces. With full stomachs and warm clothes, rural people want cultural nourishments.

The government has shifted its focus to farmers, releasing a blueprint on building a new countryside.

Ideally, the countryside will be transformed into a brand new part of the country, with advanced production, improved livelihoods, civilized social mood, clean and tidy villages, and democratic management.

Training a new generation of farmers is crucial to the success of the plan, as it is the farmers themselves who will decide the future of the countryside.

The rural areas need policies that can promote a mode of growth that is sustainable and increases living standards not just today, but also for future generations.

What should be done is to ensure that the benefits of growth are shared equally, creating a society with more social justice and solidarity.

Those farmers within reach of the booming coastal cities have been compensated with new opportunities that have lifted millions out of poverty and offered easier access to modern aspects of culture.

Farmers in distant hinterlands have no access to cultural facilities such as libraries, theatres, cinemas and gymnasiums.

At holidays and the days when their ploughs find no work to do, farmers gossip, play cards and mah-jong, or worse, gamble. Some gatherings end in fights.

Without culturally rich farmers, the government's ambitious project will feel shallow.

We are building the country into a "well-off society" where economic reform should leave no one behind.

Still, cultural development should not be allowed to bypass the countryside.

In 1998 the government launched a gigantic project to make television and radio programmes accessible to all people in rural China. By the end of 2005, 97 million farmers had satellite dishes bringing in news and shows from Beijing and other parts of the country.

Zhou Heping, vice-minister of culture, announced at a national conference earlier this year that the government will invest 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million) in the next two years to purchase books and publications for poverty-stricken counties.

There is a role for the government to play in promoting the building of cultural facilities in rural areas.

When the government hammered out the blueprint for the farmers, it is certain where the countryside is headed. The government is resolved to let the rural areas share a much larger portion of the state coffers.

It has made no mention of how much of the financial input will go for enriching the cultural lives of farmers and herdsmen.

The government should make sure that its policies on the countryside will not set aside its cultural poverty.

Poverty is not just a matter of income: ignorance and lack of voice are also factors.

Growth can put more money into farmers' pockets, but a new countryside is meaningless unless they gain cultural wealth. This is where success lies.

(China Daily March 9, 2006)