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Rural inclusive finance welcomes new opportunities in internet development
The internet has already permeated every level of social life and has become an important platform for social, economic and cultural activities and personal life. Although agricultural and rural development should not expect that a single network will solve everything, as the internet gradually permeates agriculture, rural areas and farmers, rural development
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What institutional and mechanism obstacles does the integrated development of rural industries face?
At present, the integrated development of the agricultural product processing industry and the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas faces a rare historical opportunity, but at the same time it should also be noted that the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural China is still at an early stage of development and still faces some development bottlenecks and institutional and mechanism obstacles. The main
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How to Strengthen Rural Collective Financial Management? A Full Analysis of Measures and Key Points
The main problems currently existing in rural collective financial management are: inadequate understanding of the issue. In some townships (towns), the "village accounts managed by the town" system has only gone as far as taking back the account records and materials for centralized safekeeping by the township (town) and doing the bookkeeping centrally at a set time, without operating according to the operating mechanism of village accounts managed by the town.
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800 Major Grain-Producing Counties Accelerate Coordinated Urban-Rural Development
The 800 major grain-producing counties, which account for 73.64% of the national total grain output, have always been the main force in China's grain production and have always occupied an irreplaceable position in ensuring national food security. However, the county-level economies of these counties remain very difficult. Without transfer payments from the central finance, local fiscal expenditures are hard to sustain; basic public services in society are unequal and low in level, and the benefits of reform and development cannot be fully shared. Investment in new-type urbanization is small, debts are many, and the compliance rate is low; the radiation and driving functions of towns are poor; the secondary and tertiary industries are small in scale and slow in development, making it difficult to form a pattern in which the primary, secondary and tertiary industries promote each other and develop to mutual benefit. The comparative benefit gap between urban and rural areas and between industries is obvious, farmers' income growth is slow, and the loss of young and middle-aged labor is severe. These problems have seriously affected the enthusiasm of local governments to focus on grain and of farmers to grow grain, and have brought huge hidden dangers to national food security and comprehensive, sustainable social and economic development.</p> <p> In light of rural realities and in studying the instruction in the report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China that integrated urban-rural development is the fundamental way to solve the “three rural issues” (agriculture, rural areas and farmers), it is suggested that, starting from the 13th Five-Year Plan, the implementation of coordinated integrated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties be elevated to the level of a national strategy. This will have a more positive and far-reaching impact on realizing a fundamental transformation of the development model of the national rural economy, fundamentally ensuring national food security, resolving the long-standing accumulated problems of the “three rural issues,” advancing new-type urbanization, accelerating the process of agricultural modernization and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.</p> <p> <strong> At present, the process of coordinated integrated urban-rural development in China's 800 major grain-producing counties is seriously lagging</strong></p> <p> (1) The urbanization rate of China's 800 major grain-producing counties is far below the national average</p> <p> The 800 major grain-producing counties are widely distributed across 24 provinces and autonomous regions in China, and urban-rural development generally lags behind. According to statistics, the comprehensive urbanization rate of the 800 major grain-producing counties is only about 24%, far below China's urbanization rate of 53.7% based on the permanent resident population, and even further below the average level of 80% in developed countries.</p> <p> Data from the National Bureau of Statistics for 2013 show that the secondary and tertiary industries formed through urbanization will each generate a 3.7% driving force on local GDP growth. Yet the urbanization level of the 800 major grain-producing counties is generally not high, and their capacity to lead rural areas with cities and promote agriculture with industry is low.</p> <p> (2) High-yield but poor counties are common among the 800 major grain-producing counties</p> <p>⟧ <p> According to statistics, in 2013 the grain output of the 800 major grain-producing counties (cities, districts, banners and farms) already accounted for 73.64% of the national total grain output, of which the grain sown area accounted for 65.86% of the national total sown area, and commercial grain accounted for 86.7% of the national total rural commercial grain. However, among the 800 major grain-producing counties, there were as many as 105 national-level poverty-stricken counties, accounting for 13.13% of the total 800 major grain-producing counties. Many major grain-producing counties are still fiscally poor or fiscally small counties, producing a strange cycle in which the greater the grain contribution, the less the local fiscal revenue, the lower the farmers' income, and the more backward the local economy.</p> <p> (3) The socialized service system for grain production is weak, hindering the development of grain agricultural modernization and the improvement of grain-growing efficiency</p> <p> At present, the agricultural socialized and specialized service system in China's major grain-producing counties remains weak. The added value of socialized services accounts for only 2.3% of agricultural GDP, far from the roughly 12.5% share in developed countries. This is also one of the important reasons for the slow increase in farmers' income.</p> <p> Due to the lack of necessary support, encouragement and guidance policies, the government and social entities are not highly motivated to build a socialized and specialized service system. In the main grain-producing areas, socialized services such as infrastructure construction, input services, production operation services and pest and disease prevention and control are generally not matched, not complete and not widespread; township governments have limited means and low capacity to organize services.</p> <p> (4) Low incomes for grain farmers and backward basic social service guarantees have led to serious loss and weakening of human resources among grain farmers</p> <p> In recent years, because grain prices have encountered a “ceiling” and the prices of production factors such as agricultural inputs have risen year after year, the comparative benefit of grain has become even lower and is trending downward. In most places, the net income from one mu of grain is only about two or three hundred yuan. In addition, the basic pension for grain farmers is low, rural social assistance funds are limited, grain farmers' income grows slowly, the level of social security is low, and the harsh working environment has led a large number of young and middle-aged rural laborers to go out to work, making the problem of farmers' aging increasingly apparent. According to the standard of the International Labour Organization that 45 years of age and above constitutes elderly labor, statistics on this basis show that elderly labor in China's major grain-producing counties is as high as more than 85%. Such a labor force structure cannot bear the heavy responsibility of ensuring national food security, let alone meet the needs of agricultural modernization.</p> <p> <strong> The significance of giving priority to implementing the important strategy of coordinated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties</strong></p> <p> (1) Using the accelerated pace of coordinated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties as an engine is a priority path for breaking through China's “three rural issues” dilemma</p> <p> Relying on their good agricultural production foundation, the 800 major grain-producing counties have a prominent rigid-demand effect in agriculture and the power to leverage industry. By grasping coordinated integrated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties, one grasps the focus and the key for the rural situation as a whole. The bottleneck of the “three rural issues” can be broken through here, innovative experience in new-type urbanization can be discovered here, and all reform policies for cities supporting rural areas and industry repaying agriculture can first be practiced here, striving to make practice here an incubator of experience for transforming the development model of the national rural economy.</p> <p> (2) Strengthen the sense of hardship and fully understand the important significance of transforming the development model for ensuring national food security</p> <p> At present, China's rigid demand for grain will continue to increase, but resource constraints are very obvious, and the difficulty of promoting the stable development of grain production and steadily improving comprehensive agricultural production capacity continues to grow. China's eastern coastal areas have many people and little land and obvious advantages for industry and commerce, so reductions in cultivated land and soil pollution will be difficult to avoid for a considerable time, and the contradiction between grain supply and demand is becoming increasingly prominent; the western regions suffer serious soil erosion, have mostly dry years, and face land desertification that is difficult to treat in a short time, so achieving grain self-sufficiency is also very difficult. In addition, as a large country with a population of 1.3 billion that is still growing, food security can only be based on itself, and it cannot rely excessively on the international market. By strengthening the sense of hardship, abandoning as soon as possible the old traditional path of pursuing grain for grain's sake and agriculture for agriculture's sake, and unhesitatingly taking the new path of coordinated integrated urban-rural development, it will be possible to fundamentally consolidate and improve the comprehensive grain production capacity of major grain-producing counties and safeguard China's food security in accordance with the laws of industrial development.</p> <p> (3) Accelerating the implementation of coordinated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties is an important interface for the coordinated development of China's main agricultural areas with the national new-type urbanization strategic pattern</p> <p> The 800 major grain-producing counties are widely distributed across 24 provinces and autonomous regions in central and eastern China and overlap spatially with 19 of the 21 major urbanization areas (out of a total of 21) in the national new-type urbanization strategic pattern. Through redesigning the respective positioning and functions of major urbanization areas and grain production areas, a coordinated model can be formed featuring efficient allocation of innovation resources, openness and sharing, and joint prevention, control and treatment of regional environmental issues, shaping an interactive, complementary and mutually beneficial platform of “large leading small, small supplementing large.” Through the regional interface of coordinated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties, a cross-regional “complementary integrated urban-rural development mechanism” among clusters can be constructed, becoming a new pattern of coordinated urban-rural clusters with high development agglomeration efficiency and strong complementary industrial functions nationwide, thereby making the strategic layout of China's new-type urbanization more reasonable and complete.</p> <p> (4) Accelerating the implementation of coordinated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties can enable farmers there to increase incomes and escape poverty as soon as possible, contributing to building a moderately prosperous society in all respects</p> <p> Taking the lead in promoting the process of coordinated integrated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties will enable the 36 million poor people in major grain-producing counties, who account for 51.3% of the total rural poor population, to benefit or escape poverty as soon as possible, contributing to building a moderately prosperous society in all respects on schedule.</p> <p> (5) Accelerating the implementation of coordinated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties is an indispensable component of ensuring the implementation of the “Belt and Road” strategy</p> <p> Against the background of the nation's implementation of the new-type international “Belt and Road” strategy, it is necessary to make full use of policy guidance and market mechanisms to integrate urban and rural resources, accelerate the cultivation of internationally competitive agricultural enterprise groups, support the strengthening of agricultural product trade, and encourage overseas agricultural cooperation and development; relying on the food security guarantee system of the 800 major grain-producing counties, do a good job in adjusting varieties and balancing surpluses and shortages, creating more favorable guarantees for the implementation of the “Belt and Road” strategy.</p> <p> (6) Accelerating the implementation of coordinated integrated urban-rural development in the 800 major grain-producing counties is conducive to advancing China's process of comprehensively realizing modernization</p> <p> The 800 major grain-producing counties, which account for as much as 46% of China's rural GDP, hold a pivotal position in the overall situation of rural economic development. Through implementing the strategy of coordinated integrated urban-rural development, they will certainly become an engine driving force for the development of agricultural modernization nationwide and play a positive role in accelerating the comprehensive realization of modernization.<br /> <br />
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How can rural capital start flowing? Injecting financial vitality into rural revitalization
Recently, the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Carrying Out Pilot Programs for Mortgage Loans on Rural Contracted Land Management Rights and Farmers' Housing Property Rights" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), for thoroughly implementing the spirit of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the Third and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 18th Central Committee
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Rural basic financial services still need to be strengthened, and weak links urgently need to be shored up
The "Thousand Villages Survey" is a large-scale social practice and social research project of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics that takes "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" issues as its research object. This year's theme is "Coverage and Use of Rural Basic Financial Services." The results of this survey show that China's rural financial penetration
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How Does Rural Industrial Integration Move Forward? New Types of Business Entities Do It This Way
New Types of Business Entities Can Drive Integration Like This Promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas requires mobilizing the enthusiasm of the vast number of traditional small farmers, and the role of new types of agricultural business entities should not be underestimated. Through new types of agricultural business entities driving the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas, it is possible to achieve cross-sectoral and intensive allocation of capital, technology and resource factors, enabling agricultural production, agricultural product processing and sales, catering, leisure and other rural service industries to develop in a coordinated manner, ultimately achieving extension of the rural agricultural industrial chain, expansion of the industrial scope and increased farmers' income.
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How can rural local talent be cultivated and developed?
In the vast rural areas, there is an active group of such local experts and "field scholars"; they are local talent who have long struggled in all walks of life and on all fronts in rural areas, and they exert a strong influence and exemplary role on the younger generation in rural areas. Comprehensively strengthen the training of rural youth
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Revisiting the Issue of Rural Homestead Withdrawal
I. Introduction With the acceleration of urbanization, China's rural population has been migrating to cities and towns on a large scale, and the issue of rural homestead withdrawal has become increasingly prominent. Under the situation of conserving land use, topics such as the utilization of rural homesteads, the establishment of a homestead withdrawal mechanism, and the reform of the rural homestead system have been given considerable theoretical and practical significance. To summarize, there are mainly the following five points: First, the current rural residential land occupation scale is large and the utilization efficiency is low, causing a waste of land resources and being unfavorable to the protection of the red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land. Second, industrialization and urbanization have brought about the paradox of a decrease in rural population and an increase in rural construction land, which is unfavorable to the intensive use of land and the improvement of farmers' lives. Third, the current homestead management system hinders the realization of the value of land factors and farmers' property rights, and is unfavorable to the objective requirements of coordinated urban-rural development and market-oriented resource allocation. Fourth, the establishment of a homestead withdrawal mechanism should have an economic and social foundation; the current social situation already has the economic and policy conditions, and the opportunity should be seized to carry out reform as soon as possible. Fifth, the establishment of a homestead withdrawal mechanism helps the urban transfer of rural population, accelerates the urbanization process, and promotes the efficient use of land resources. Regarding how to establish a homestead withdrawal mechanism, scholars mainly have the following three suggestions: First, establish a complete homestead use and transfer system to guarantee the realization of land asset value and curb the many problems caused by farmers' uncompensated land occupation. Second, improve the mechanisms for rural homestead exchange, consolidation, and reclamation, and guide farmers to withdraw from homesteads in an orderly manner through supporting policies and funds. Third, reform the rural homestead management system, liberalize the transfer of homestead use rights, protect farmers' property rights and interests, and improve farmers' living conditions.</p> <p> From the rural field surveys conducted by the author and the author's team in recent years, most of the above discussions on the issue of rural homestead utilization and the establishment of a homestead withdrawal mechanism are specious and inconsistent with the general rural situation that accounts for 95% of the total. The emergence of the current problem of rural homestead utilization is related not only to the rural land system, the urban-rural dual structure, and the imperfect social security system, but also to China's development strategy, economic structure, and population structure. Farmer mobility and household livelihood models are important factors affecting homestead withdrawal. Attributing problems such as hollow villages, multiple homesteads per household, small property-rights housing, and illegal homestead transfers to the lag of the legal system and the entanglement of the welfare nature of homesteads is not only far from the reality of the vast rural areas but also involves problems of argumentative logic. In view of this, the author attempts to respond from three aspects: the population mobility mechanism, the nature of rural homesteads, and rural homestead utilization; to discuss the causes and social harms of homestead problems in general rural areas; and to try to propose a long-term sustainable homestead withdrawal plan that does not require excessive resource input.</p> <p> II. The Connotation of Rural Homesteads and Their Utilization Efficiency</p> <p> 1. Local Knowledge and the Connotation of Homesteads</p> <p> At present, political and academic circles have not formed a unified understanding of the connotation of rural homesteads. Multiple legal documents have not clearly defined the connotation and extension of homesteads, and scholars classify and define rural homesteads according to different standards. From existing research, there are mainly four views on the definition of rural homesteads: First, rural homesteads are land used by farmer households to build residences, including housing, ancillary buildings, and courtyard land. Second, rural homesteads are residential land built by farmers, allocated by rural collective economic organizations and used by farmers on a long-term basis. Third, rural homesteads are land allocated by rural collective economic organizations to farmer households to guarantee their living needs, including housing sites, courtyards, ancillary housing (kitchens, warehouses, toilets), biogas pits, livestock and poultry sheds, and firewood stacks. Fourth, rural homesteads are non-cultivated vacant land in rural areas, including land with and without buildings. Academic disputes mainly focus on the following aspects: first, whether courtyards belong to homesteads; second, whether greening land in front of and behind houses belongs to homesteads; third, where the geographical boundary of a homestead with integrated house and land lies; fourth, what the relationship is between homesteads with houses, homesteads without houses, and planned homesteads.</p> <p> Chinese rural society varies greatly across regions, and popular understandings of rural homesteads differ considerably. This different understanding creates difficulties in statistically measuring the total amount of rural homesteads. In the rural areas of Jingmen City, Hubei Province, a homestead is land centered on housing occupation and extending over a large area around it. A standard homestead mainly consists of house occupation land, a grain-drying yard, a garden plot, a vegetable plot, and a pond, which has become a widely accepted "local knowledge" at both the township and village levels. Therefore, the homestead area in rural Jingmen City is relatively large, with 2-3 mu per household being very normal, and a small number of farmers' homestead areas even reaching 7-8 mu, mainly because the garden plots and grain-drying yards occupy a relatively large area. During the first and second national land resource surveys, surveyors used the locally consensual concept of homesteads as the measurement standard, which led to a statistical expansion of homestead area.</p> <p> In fact, in rural areas of central and western China, many places have relatively large homestead areas. For example, rural houses in Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality generally have a threshing floor in front and a woodlot behind, which farmers generally regard as part of the homestead, so the average homestead area per household is 2-3 mu. Moreover, in the eyes of many farmers, homesteads and arable land differ little in nature, and only land conducive to production and living has value. The classification of agricultural land, construction land, and unused land determined by the Land Administration Law of the People's Republic of China has little connection with farmers' real lives, and farmers do not care much about those abstract land rights.</p> <p> 2. Farmers' Subject Position and Homestead Utilization</p> <p> Farmers understand homesteads from the perspective of social function, which means that the relevant components of homesteads are important to farmers' production and living, and farmers will also change their understanding and utilization of homesteads with the changes of the times, so the utilization efficiency of rural homesteads is not low. For example, in some rural areas of Jingmen City, with technological progress and industrial development, the function of ponds has been shrinking, and some ponds have even been abandoned, so farmers no longer regard ponds as part of homesteads. The problem is that academia has generally formed a consensus that the amount of idle rural homesteads is large, that ancillary land such as grain-drying yards, garden plots, and ponds is used extensively, and that utilization efficiency is low. For example, Wang Xudong's statistics show that from 1997 to 2008, the rural population decreased by 14%, while village land increased by about 4%, showing a reverse trend of people decreasing and land increasing. The total land use per rural household exceeded 1 mu, and the per capita residential land use reached as high as 229 square meters, far higher than the stipulated 150 square meters. Starting from the large scale, low utilization rate, and scattered, disorderly, and empty phenomena of rural residential land, scholars have concluded that rural land resources are seriously wasted and that the potential for rural land consolidation is huge, and therefore suggestions to carry out land consolidation through the policy of linking increases and decreases in urban and rural construction land and the urban-rural coordination policy have become widely popular.</p> <p> In this regard, the author will not for the time being comment on whether the measurement and estimation logic of rural residential land is scientific under the background of an uncertain concept of homesteads, but will only explain the state of homestead utilization efficiency from the perspective of rural homestead utilization under macro-structural constraints. At present, there are different versions of China's farmer population, with commonly seen figures of over 700 million, over 800 million, and over 900 million. The author agrees with He Xuefeng's judgment that China's current rural population is about 880 million. On the premise of China's sustained and rapid economic development, even if the pace of population urbanization increases to 50% in the next 50 years, rural areas will still have 700-800 million people. In other words, for a considerable period in the future, most farmers will still find it difficult to settle in cities and will still have to move back and forth between urban and rural areas like migratory birds. The non-withdrawal of rural homesteads is closely related to the instability of farmers' migrant work income and the irreplaceability of the production function of homesteads. Examined from the perspective of farmers' subject position, it can be found that rural homestead utilization is reasonable, and the waste of land resources is merely a superficial understanding from the top down.</p> <p> Farmers' income mainly comes from two parts: first, going out to work, and second, farming at home. On the one hand, China's economic structure and its position in the international system determine that most farmers who enter cities earn meager wages from work and find it difficult to complete the urban reproduction of their labor power. Moreover, with the rapid advancement of urbanization and industrialization, a large number of farmers have poured into cities, making the labor market oversupplied, and the income space of urban migrant workers has been further compressed. On the other hand, under the resource constraints of a large population and little land and the background of economic globalization, the situation of agricultural growth without income growth has long existed. As a result, agricultural income and migrant work income together support the livelihood of small farmer households, and neither can be missing. Under the above macro-structural constraints, rural homesteads must not only assume the living function of providing shelter for residents and the production function of guaranteeing agricultural income, but also assume the social security function of coping with market risks.</p> <p> In order to better obtain family development funds, under normal circumstances, the elderly farm in the village to support themselves, while young people go out to earn money to support their small families. This has to some extent caused idle homesteads. Affected by farmers' urban employment, some homesteads remain idle for a long time, while others remain idle for a shorter time, and cases of homesteads being permanently abandoned are not common. Therefore, the floor area ratio of 0.268 per household calculated by some scholars from the perspective of village spatial form, used to show that rural homestead use efficiency is low, does not conform to the actual situation of rural homestead utilization. Homestead use efficiency should be considered from the perspective of small farmer household livelihoods and approached from the role of social security. Discussing homestead use efficiency based on residential occupancy, without considering the small farmer household livelihood model and without considering farmers' mobility mechanisms, does not conform to rural social reality.<br /> <br />
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A Review of Research on Rural Homestead Issues in China: A Synthesis of Core Viewpoints
With the rapid development of China's economy and the continuous acceleration of urbanisation, urban construction land has been continuously expanding. Urban construction land resources are becoming increasingly scarce, and the expansion of urban scale has incorporated the rural collective land on the outskirts of cities into urban land. After the 1978 reform
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