1. Policy background and main content In order to further promote the implementation of policies to reduce farmers' burdens and strengthen agriculture, benefit agriculture and increase farmers5 income, and safeguard farmers5 legitimate rights and interests, following the spirit of the fifth plenary session of the 18th CPC central committee, central poverty relief and development work conference, and central rural work conference, and the requirement of 2016 central No. 1 document on "enhancing the supervision work of farmers' burdens”，the Mo A, Ministry of Finance, State Development and Reform Commission, State Council，s Legislative Affairs Office, Ministry of Education, and the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television co-issued Opinion on Well Conducting the 2016 Work of Reducing Farmers' Burdens, and made deployment for 2016 work, with main polices as follows:
1) Enhanced agricultural charging and price management. Should prevent and avoid from the source illegal charging projects and behavior to determine charging standards, carefully implement the checking system of agricultural charging documents, strictly check and handle newly established agricultural charging documents and projects, and conduct irregular cleaning up of existing agricultural charging documents and projects. Should enhance the supervision of agricultural charging behavior, strictly implement "publicity system" of agricultural charging and price, which means all relevant matters including charging projects, standards, approval agencies and supervision phone numbers must be publicly displayed at villages and towns governments and charging units, timely update the displayed content, and enhance charging transparency. Should further reinforce the supervision in fields such as rural compulsory education, farmers，house building, and agricultural water and electricity use, and seriously investigate and punish any behaviors that harm farmers' interests. Enhance the supervision of burdens on new-type agricultural management subjects such as family farms and farmers5 cooperatives, implement rate relief and favorable price policy for farmers and new-type agricultural management subjects, continue to promote the elimination of unreasonable agricultural administrative fees, and reduce the expenditure of agricultural production and management activities.
2) Explored and established village-level organization burden supervision system. Should enhance supervision on village-level organizations' burdens, prevent related departments and units from transferring work funding gap to village-level organizations, and forbid illegally assigning tasks to village-level organizations or requiring village-level organizations to provide supporting fund. Organized and carried out special investigations on the issue of village-level organizations， burdens, analyzed and made clear village-level organizations' burden situation from the aspects of village affairs management, social public affairs, and infrastructure construction, and studied and put forward targeted supervision and management system. Promoted the improvement of democratic management system for village cadres' non-production expenditures such as income subsidy, office affairs, travel and business trips, studying and investigations, donation and sponsoring, and played villagers' role in democratic supervision. Explored and set up management system to standardizing village-level organizations' social public affairs responsibility, following the principle of "rights go with responsibilities, fees go with matters"， in those situations where relevant departments and units arrange village-level organizations to coordinate the implementation work, they must provide corresponding work fund. Made clear relevant subjects' input responsibility on rural infrastructure construction and public service project construction, and the fund that should be provided by government must be available in full amount at due time.
3) Strictly implement quota system for village-level public subscription of newspapers and periodicals. Should adopt practical measures to solve the problem of excessively assigning newspapers and periodicals to village-level organizations, and the over-quota of their public subscription, adhere to the "quota system" for village-level public subscription of newspapers and periodicals, public subscription should first include party newspapers and periodicals, shouldn't illegally expand the subscription range, and mustn't go over the prescribed limit in subscribing any newspaper or periodical. Standardize subscription behavior, all departments mustn't assign the issue of newspapers and periodicals to village-level organizations via methods such as task breakdown or replacement subscription and paying, mustn't assign the issue of newspapers and periodicals via releasing documents or issuing quotas, and mustn't require village-level organizations in any way to subscribe newspapers or periodicals within industrial system, or any publications with internal information feature. Enhance the supporting efforts for village-level organizations' subs-cription on newspapers and periodicals, following central requirement, promote regions where conditions allow to give major party newspapers and periodicals for free to village-level organizations, and relevant departments set aside a certain amount of party membership dues to support the subscription of party newspapers and periodicals by village-level organizations, and provide key support for those in poverty-stricken areas.
4) Improve village-level public welfare undertakings construction and investment mechanism. Further improve the policies and measures of one matter one discussion, raising fund and labor, and financial reward and subsidy, standardize the implementation of one matter one discussion project, and improve new mechanism in village-level public welfare undertakings construction featured by democratic decision, diverse investment and balanced development. Should reasonably define the range to raise fund and labor, innovate the procedures of villagers， democratic discussion of official businesses, gradually lower the quota standard of raising fund and labor, and explored measures to control the quantity and proportion of replacing labor with fund. Village collectives' investment in village-level public welfare undertakings should be discussed and decided through villagers meeting or villagers' representatives meeting, and should implement review procedure as an important item in the plan of raising fund and labor. Standardize the implementation of "one matter one discussion" projects, practically perform the supervision duty of one matter one discussion, enhance the reviewing and checking of the plan to raise fund and labor, and reinforce the efforts in special inspection and special auditing. Adhere to the inclusive direction of public service supply, constantly expand the coverage of financial reward and subsidy, support with priority villages without the one matter one discussion financial reward and subsidy but with high mass participation and in accordance with village layout planning requirement, and promoted the balanced development of village-level public welfare undertakings.
5) Focus on solving farmers' burden issue in poverty-stricken areas. Regard poverty-stricken areas as the focus of burden reduction work, and promote the implementation of policies that reduce burden and benefit farmers, and drive burden reduction and income increase for farmers. Enhance supervision and inspection on farmers5 burdens, carry out special treatment on agricultural arbitrary charges and task assigning in key counties for national poverty alleviation and development work, and seriously investigate, punish and correct foul play. Summarize the doings of only raising labor not raising fund, the nonperformance of replacing labor under one matter one discussion project with fund in poverty -stricken areas of some regions; Promote favorable implementation of central and provincial one matter one discussion financial reward and subsidy for poverty-stricken areas. Carry out transportation, water conservancy and electric power infrastructure construction in poverty-stricken areas, promote the increase of proportion of central and provincial financial investment and subsidy, strictly implement the policy of eliminating county-level supporting fund for public welfare construction projects arranged by central government in poverty-stricken areas, and forbid level-by-level task assignment to towns, village-level organizations and farmers.
2. Policy implementation situation and effect evaluation In 2016，with high atten-tion of party committees and governments at each level and joint efforts by relevant departments, the work to reduce farmers，burdens achieved remarkably results, national farmers，burdens continued to maintain at a relatively low level, and gained wholehearted welcome from general grass-root cadres and farmers.
1) Investigated and punished a large number of wrongdoings on increasing farmers' burdens. Targeting at prominent problems reported by farmers, each region carried out in-depth special treatment, focused on the treatment of problems including arbitrary charging in the fields of rural compulsory education, farmers house building, and agricultural water and electricity use. In 2016, each region investigated and punished a total of 1 459 illegal wrongdoings involving agricultural arbitrary charging and task assigning, dealt with 459 persons in charge, returned 83.68 million yuan overcharged fees to farmers, and reduced farmers' burdens by 388 million yuan.
2) One matter one discussion and raising fund and labor management more standardized. Each region further improved the policies and measures of one matter one discussion, enhanced the plan reviewing and special inspection for raising fund and labor, and promoted standardized management for one matter one discussion and raising fund and labor. Most of the regions launched special auditing and special inspection for "one matter one discussion" raising fund and labor, corrected issues in some regions such as turning one matter one discussion into fixed charging program, raising fund and labor beyond scope and beyond standard, and producing village-level debt.
3) Supervision and inspection on farmers' burdens further enhanced. Each region adhered to the inspection on the implementation for burden reducing and farmers benefiting policies, innovated inspection and supervision methods, made timely reviewing and correction once a question was discovered, and set up a publicity system for inspection and notification. In 2016, it focused on spot-checking 12 counties (cities) of three provinces, found 134 problems in five categories of grass-root discipline violations, checked and returned 2.825 9 million yuan arbitrarily charged or assigned fees, and appropriated 7.929 8 million yuan unpaid fund to strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers.
