On July 10, the Sichuan Provincial High-Quality Development Promotion Conference for County-Level Economy was held. Wang Xiaohui, Secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and Chairman of the Standing Committee of Sichuan Provincial People's Congress, attended and addressed the conference. He emphasized that it is necessary to thoroughly study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's important discourses on county-level development and the spirit of his series of important instructions for Sichuan's work, adhere to tailoring measures to local conditions, implementing policies on a categorized basis, and advancing in a coordinated manner, vigorously promote high-quality development of the county-level economy, and continuously enhance the comprehensive strength and overall competitiveness, so as to solidify the foundation for Sichuan's modernization on the new journey of the new era.

Shi Xiaolin, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and Acting Governor of the People's Government of Sichuan Province, chaired the conference.

In his speech, Wang Xiaohui pointed out that since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has attached great importance to county-level development, and General Secretary Xi Jinping has delivered crucial speeches and issued a series of important instructions on multiple occasions, elucidating profoundly the significance, primary direction, and methods for developing the county-level economy, providing fundamental guidance for advancing the high-quality development of the county-level economy in the new era. In recent years, the provincial Party committee has diligently implemented the important instructions of General Secretary, consistently prioritizing the development of the county-level economy at the strategic position for planning, deployment and advancement. Through the relentless efforts of the entire province, Sichuan's county-level economic development has witnessed a continuous enhancement in capabilities, a substantial increase in the number of strong counties, and a consistent optimization of the tiered structure, culminating in remarkable achievements. At the same time, it is crucial to clearly acknowledge that the development of the county-level economy across the entire province still confronts weaknesses and challenges, which are primarily evident in areas such as insufficient overall strength, less optimized industrial structure, and a lack of momentum for sustained development. As we embark on the new journey, effectively leveraging the foundational support role of the county-level economy becomes increasingly crucial for further implementing the development strategy of "synchronized development of new industrialization, information technology application, urbanization, and agricultural modernization, urban-rural integration, and common prosperity of five zones" and striving to write a new chapter of Sichuan in advancing Chinese modernization. The entire province must take a strategic and overall stance to fully recognize the importance and urgency of promoting high-quality development of the county-level economy under the new situation, further unify thoughts and understanding, strengthen confidence and determination, accurately grasp the new circumstances, tasks and requirements, seize opportunities, address challenges, and create a new situation through proactively responding to and steering changes, strive to promote high-quality development of the county-level economy, and move faster to establish a new pattern in county-level economic high-quality development where strong counties set the pace, healthy competition among counties spurs advancement, and collaborative endeavors promote common prosperity.

Wang Xiaohui emphasized the need to concentrate efforts on effectively implementing and delivering key tasks in promoting the high-quality development of the county-level economy. The provincial Party committee and the provincial government recently issued Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of the County-Level Economy in the New Era. All localities and departments should earnestly implement these guidelines in line with their specific circumstances. Currently, it is crucial to prioritize and effectively manage five key areas of work.
First, we should work to ensure the industrial progress of the county-level economy. All localities should align with the action plan for enhancing the quality and doubling the scale of the six major advantageous industries, as well as the initiative to cultivate 10 billion-worth leading industries at the county-level economic landscape, identify primary growth directions and niche segments within the provincial industrial layout based on respective unique resource endowments and industrial foundations, develop industry, agriculture, business or tourism where conditions permit, coordinate efforts to advance the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, along with the cultivation and development of emerging industries, speed up efforts to foster new industries, new models, and new forms of business, and ultimately form characteristic sectors with comparative advantages. Vigorous efforts should be made to implement the action plan for enhancing the capabilities of industrial parks, strengthen the assessment of input intensity and output efficiency on a per-unit-area basis, and pursue coordinated advancement in the planning, construction, integration and upgrading of various types of parks in county-level regions, cultivate and reinforce a number of enterprise innovation entities, establish a batch of county-level industrial development platforms with considerable comprehensive strength, and develop a series of distinctive parks featuring significant radiating and driving effects, high output per unit area, and strong industrial agglomeration force. It is essential to progress the opening-up platforms capability enhancement project, facilitate the extension of service functions of pilot free trade zones and airport economic zones to the county level, and develop bases for the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade. It is necessary to back county-level regions in setting up provincial development zones where feasible, assist advantageous county-level regions in broadening industrial development space via the "one zone with multiple parks" model, and encourage underdeveloped counties to strengthen regional cooperation and construct satellite industrial parks to effectively drive industrial cluster development through the parks.

Second, we should work to ensure the integrated development of urban and rural areas. It is crucial to further advance the new type of people-centered urbanization, continuously enhance the development capabilities of county towns, support county-level regions that meet the criteria to plan and construct according to medium-sized city standards and establish themselves as sub-city centers within the municipal regions, work faster to grant permanent urban residency to eligible people who move from rural to urban areas, and better leverage the radiating and driving role of county towns. It is necessary to solidly advance rural revitalization across the board, learn from and apply the experience of the Green Rural Revival Program, concentrate efforts on building a beautiful and harmonious countryside that is desirable to live and work in, channel effective initiatives towards consolidating and expanding achievements in poverty alleviation in coordination with the extensive drive for rural revitalization, and adopt market-oriented measures such as developing industries, increasing employment, and revitalizing resources to continuously broaden avenues for increasing farmers' incomes. It is necessary to accelerate efforts in narrowing the urban-rural gap, focus on promoting agriculture through industry and revitalizing rural areas through urban development, intensify efforts to establish an institutional mechanism that fosters circulation and mutual growth between urban and rural economies, ensures the rational allocation of resources, provides inclusive and shared basic public services, and achieves integrated infrastructure development, and leverage the new type of urbanization to drive the revitalization and development of rural areas.

Third, we should work to ensure the development of the private sector. It is imperative to diligently implement the plans and requirements of the provincial Party committee and the provincial government regarding the optimization of the business environment with cost control as the core and the "1+2" policy system for promoting the development of the private sector, give special attention to issues affecting private economic entities, such as the increase in comprehensive costs, fluctuating confidence and expectations, and insufficient factor support, take more pragmatic measures to further reduce business entities' operating costs, making it more apparent for enterprises to alleviate their burdens and more convenient for them to handle affairs, and continuously enhance the effectiveness of bailing out businesses in difficulty and bolster the sense of gain among enterprises.

Fourth, we should work to ensure deepening reform across the board. It is essential to further implement the "1+20" pilot project for integrated urban-rural development reform within the county-level regions, pioneer mechanisms that share the costs of farmers relocating to cities and provide the compensated exit of relevant rural rights and interests, innovate incentives to attract talent to rural areas, deepen the reform of the rural collective property rights system, and prudently and steadily advance the reform of the rural homestead system and the pilot programs for market-based transfer of use right to rural collective land designated for business-related construction, thereby continuously enhancing the vitality and financial prospects of county-level development. It is necessary to deepen the reform of the investment and financing mechanisms, further clarify the respective fiscal powers, administrative authorities, and expenditure responsibilities at each governmental level, refine the government's investment system, uphold the principle of "entry unless on the negative list" and treat all investment entities equally, and expedite the development of a diversified investment structure characterized by robust fiscal support, targeted financial prioritization, and active engagement of social capital. It is essential to deepen the reform of expanding county-level economic management authority to empower counties, further clarify the roles and responsibilities among the province, cities and counties, advance a system wherein counties' applications are directly reported to the province, and the province's arrangements are directly delivered to counties, and grant county-level authorities greater autonomy in resource integration and utilization, so as to continuously bolster the momentum and vitality of county-level economic development.

Fifth, we should work to ensure both development and security. It is crucial to rigorously hold the red line of arable land, enhance the conservation and development of farmland, enforce stringent controls over the use of cultivated land, and dedicatedly safeguard the lush and productive fields within the Tianfu region. It is essential to rigorously hold the ecological conservation red line, win the critical battle of pollution prevention and control with a higher standard, take solid measures to rectify prominent ecological and environmental issues, advance with a holistic and systematic approach to conserving and improving mountain, water, forest, farmland, grassland and desert ecosystems, and strive for high-level protection to underpin high-quality development. It is imperative to strictly hold the bottom line of safety, significantly enhance the efficacy of social governance, implement concrete initiatives in disaster prevention and mitigation and workplace safety, intensify the inspection and rectification efforts targeting risks and potential hazards in key areas, and take decisive measures to ward off the occurrence of any serious and major accidents. It is crucial to rigorously hold the warning line for local government debts, actively working to decrease the current debt stock, curb the growth of new debt, and mitigate associated risks. It is essential to strictly hold the quality line of statistical data, ensure the rigorous enforcement of statistical laws and regulations, and endeavor to collect all necessary data while simultaneously guaranteeing data integrity and authenticity.

Wang Xiaohui emphasized the need to continually improve the support and safeguard measures to underpin the high-quality development of the county-level economy. We must enhance organization and leadership. The provincial leading group for new-type urbanization and integrated urban-rural development should fully exercise its role in coordinating and planning; relevant provincial departments should actively enhance their supervision and guidance in accordance with their respective roles and responsibilities; all cities (prefectures) should collaboratively strategize and advance the development of the county-level economy; and counties (county-level cities, districts) should proactively take on responsibilities and take effective and vigorous measures to drive forward various reform and development initiatives. We must strengthen policy support, utilize the role of fiscal support and financial leverage, enhance support in terms of funding, industry and projects, and ensure that county-level development is fueled by significant and tangible financial investment. We must enhance factor support, establish a provincial-level coordination mechanism, ensure that essential elements like land, capital, energy and environmental resources are allocated to the most efficient and urgently needed areas, offer strong support to county-level regions showing positive development trends, and provide basic development guarantees to regions that are lagging. It is imperative to enhance the assessment and evaluation initiatives and ensure that the results are effectively utilized to further underscore the orientation towards practical work and to actively foster an entrepreneurial spirit.

The conference was held in a hybrid form combining "on-site visit and teleconference", with each city (prefecture) establishing a sub-venue. During the conference, attendees at the main venue conducted inspection visits to several sites, including Trina Solar Co., Ltd., the manufacturing base of FAW Jiefang Sichuan Branch in Guanghan, and the Yonghu Community in Shifang City. The conference presented a report on the economic development of county-level economies across the province. Representatives from Chengdu Municipality, Deyang Municipality, Gulin County, Guanghan City, Jiangyou City, the Wutongqiao District of Leshan City, and Quxian County made exchange speeches.

The attendees at the main venue of the conference also included provincial leaders, heads from relevant provincial departments (units), some central units based in Sichuan, provincial research institutions, and state-owned enterprises, and leading Party and government officials from the counties (county-level cities, districts) involved in the assessment and evaluation framework for the high-quality development of county-level economy, among others.