Beijing, Sept 3. (PTI): China will invest $ 12.58 million this year to train illiterate farmers in 10,000 villages on modern agricultural technology as part of the Government's ambitious efforts to reduce the growing urban-rural divide.

Under this, 10,000 villages nationwide have been chosen and they would be given $ 1,258 each as subsidy for training, vice minister of agriculture, Wei Chao'an said.

Chinese farmers received merely 7.3 years of education on the average and 92 per cent of the country's illiterate and semiliterate people are in rural areas, Wei said yesterday.

Nearly half of China's 490 million rural labourers merely received preliminary education and 7.6 per cent of them are illiterate or semiliterate, the official said.

Most of them have never received any professional training and can hardly meet the requirement in the development of a new countryside, an ambitious programme of the ruling Communist Party of China, said.

China has focused on developing its industries and cities in the past 20-plus years. Sluggish rural development provides a stark contrast to booming urban economy.

China set the goal of building new countryside last year, hoping to achieve balanced development in the country.

A report with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said that up to 300 million Chinese farmers will move into cities over the next 20 years. They all need to find jobs in cities.

Last week, China's Ministry of Science and Technology published the first volume of books in a series to teach farmers practical agricultural technology.