From Reuters:
China’s 750 million-strong farming population faces a tough 2009, the government warned on Sunday, vowing price support, land controls and curbs on imports to shore up flagging rural incomes and ward off unrest.
The Communist Party government customarily focuses its first major policy statement each year on rural development and this one was accompanied by a sobering warning about the pressures from the global financial crisis, falling commodity prices and rising migrant worker unemployment.
“At present, the international financial crisis continues to spread, its negative impact on our country’s economy has been deepening by the day, and the shocks to agricultural and rural development are constantly emerging,” said the document issued through the Xinhua news agency.
