China is an agricultural country with a large proportion of rural population. With the transition from a planned to a market-oriented rural economy, the accomplishments in agriculture were remarkable in the country in last decades. It is the fact that land holdings are very small in China and a large number of labours are shifting from rural areas to the urban areas. With the goals to meet the nation's food needs and poverty reduction for the huge population, China is facing challenges in the way of raising the income of rural people and sustainable development in agriculture. Farmers currently gain benefits from the new policies on rural reform, which has played critical role in the success of sustained rural development. The strategies for harmonizing the development between rural and urban areas being implemented will help to generate more developmental opportunities for rural communities. The researches on science and technology in agriculture have progressed dramatically in China. The hybrid rice is a remarkable achievement by Chinese scientists, which not only contributes to the food security in China, but also the whole world. The relevant organizations play a significant role in improving sciences and technologies among farmers by bringing advanced knowledge to the countryside and to every rural household. Currently, many programmes are going on for promoting economic construction in rural areas.
Plant genetic resources are critical for meeting the goals of agricultural development in China. In last many years, Chinese government gave high priority to conservation and use of plant genetic resources. The national plant genetic resources management system is very complicated and usually operated by several relevant ministries, the State Forestry Administration for forest genetic resources programme, the Ministry of Health and the State Administration of Traditional Medicine for the medicinal plant genetic resources programme, and the Ministry of Agriculture for the crop genetic resources programme. China has set up the national ex situ conservation system composed of long-term genebank, mid-term genebank and field genebank. About 390 thousand accessions have been stored in these genebanks. Characterization and evaluation were carried out for most of agronomic characters. Useful materials were identified and distributed to breeders and other users. Documentation system on crop genetic resources was well developed. For future, the efforts will be made to promote the safeguard of the existing collections, including wild relatives of crops. The use of crop genetic resources in improvement programmes should be the ultimate objective of all undertaking activities in the country. The researches on plant genetic resources will be advanced through the activities on analyzing the genetic diversity, identifying genepools, mining useful genes, and promoting the access to genetic materials.

• Zhang Zongwen(Coordinator, Bioversity International)