In his annual state-of-the nation address to the National People's Congress, the Chinese parliament that meets for only ten days a year, China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, set out what he described as a "major historic task". The aim, he said, was to bring about rapid and significant change in rural areas, which have lagged far behind the booming urban ones and witnessed growing unrest. But although Mr Wen pledged more spending to build what Beijing is nowadays calling a "new socialist countryside", he offered few durable remedies. A new five-year plan suggests that the rural-urban divide may remain just as wide at the end of the decade.
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