21 January 2021, China: The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and China Tower Corporation Limited (“China Tower”) signed a Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement (SCFA) in Beijing on Jan. 19. Both parties agreed to jointly promote the development of digital villages and smart agriculture through extensive use of digital technology as part of the rural vitalization strategy.
Tang Renjian, Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Tong Jilu, Chairman of China Tower, attended the signing ceremony and delivered speeches. Yu Kangzhen, Vice Minister of MARA, and Gu Xiaomin, General Manager of China Tower, signed the agreement on behalf of the two sides. Chief Economist and Director of the General Office of MARA Wei Baigang was also present at the ceremony.
Tang pointed out that, China Tower has been exploring approaches to developing digital agriculture and villages with great success in recent years, building on its resources and unique advantages. Tang was optimistic about the prospect of cooperating with China Tower, given the Corporation’s resources well-suited to the needs of building modern agriculture and rural areas for the new era. He said that the two sides should, in line with the principle of achieving shared development, carry out institutional innovation and explore cost-effective approaches under the SCFA, in order to inject new vitality to China’s rural vitalization and agricultural modernization.
Under the SCFA, the two sides will follow the principle of complementing each other’s strengths, fully tap the advantages of China Tower, and jointly build video surveillance networks in agriculture and rural areas, to deepen applications of video surveillance in areas such as farmland monitoring, intelligent fishery management and rural digital finance. In particular, a remote surveillance network will be deployed to monitor progress in fishery law-enforcement on fishing moratorium in the Yangtze River basin, to provide technical support for automatic identification, alarming and evidence-collection of illegal fishing. The partnership is expected to contribute to precision agriculture, smart agricultural service management and digitalized rural governance.
