Shoring Up Rural Weaknesses Is Key to Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects
The report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the “Two Centenary Goals”, and the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee stressed that building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020 is the first of the “Two Centenary Goals”. Now 2020 is very close, and the tasks of construction in all areas are extremely heavy. Among them, properly addressing the issues of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” is the focus and difficulty of achieving the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. To grasp this focus and difficulty and shore up the weak link of rural areas in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, we must uphold the unity of goal orientation and problem orientation and effectively break down institutional and structural obstacles.
Accelerating Development in Old Revolutionary Base Areas, Ethnic Minority Areas, Border Areas and Poverty-Stricken Areas
On the basis of the five aspects of requirements for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects set out in the report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward new target requirements for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, explicitly stating that “the economy should maintain medium-to-high-speed growth”, stressing that “the balance, inclusiveness and sustainability of development should be improved”, and requiring that “consumption should contribute significantly more to economic growth, and the urbanization rate of the registered population should rise faster”, that “obvious progress should be made in agricultural modernization, the living standards and quality of the people should be generally raised, rural poor people under China's current standards should be lifted out of poverty, all poor counties should be delisted, and regional overall poverty should be solved”, and so on. From these more concrete target requirements, it is not hard to see that properly addressing the issues of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” is an important task in the decisive stage of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
⟦NL> The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed “adhering to shared development”, stressing the need to improve the capacity for jointly building public services and the level of sharing, and to increase transfer payments to old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poverty-stricken areas. Old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poverty-stricken areas are the areas where the issues of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” are most concentrated and most prominent, and are the weak links in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. According to the actual conditions of old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poverty-stricken areas, more targeted support policies combining short-term and long-term measures can be formulated. In terms of short-term policies, transfer payments to old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poverty-stricken areas can be increased to support medical assistance for serious illnesses, subsidies for free school lunches, student aid funds, employment training and so on in those areas; channels for private charitable funds to provide assistance to old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poverty-stricken areas can be broadened; and so on. Doing so will greatly boost public morale, effectively guide and promote social forces to participate in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and at the same time help to stimulate consumption relatively quickly. In terms of long-term policies, a series of measures such as relocation, changing outdated customs, improving transportation conditions, strengthening infrastructure construction, developing the green economy and distinctive economies, strengthening community-level organizations, and even developing the culture of rural sages on the basis of building a new socialist countryside can be adopted to accelerate development in old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas and poverty-stricken areas, so that no area is left behind on the journey of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
Letting Farmers Obtain More Property Income
Properly addressing the issues of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” has always been the top priority of the whole Party's work. If rural areas cannot develop and farmers cannot become well-off, the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects will come to nothing. An important reason for the long-term lag in rural development is that the assets in farmers' hands are difficult to turn into capital; farmers' contracted land, homestead land, houses and collectively operated construction land are difficult to use for mortgages, liquidation and other capital operations. In this way, it is difficult for farmers to obtain property income. In contrast, some farmers in urban suburbs receive large compensation payments because their land is expropriated, and some even become rich overnight. It should be recognized that only by making farmers' wallets fuller in a reasonable and lawful way can their living standards and sustained consumption capacity be improved. Only then can farmers live a moderately prosperous life in all respects. This can also serve as a major measure to ease the current downward pressure on the economy.
The “Decision” of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed: “Farmers shall be given the rights to possess, use, benefit from and transfer contracted land, and to mortgage and guarantee contracted management rights, and farmers shall be allowed to use contracted management rights as shares to develop industrialized agricultural operations. Contracted management rights shall be encouraged to circulate in the open market to specialized large households, family farms, farmer cooperatives and agricultural enterprises, so as to develop various forms of scale operations.” In accordance with the spirit of the central authorities, the ownership right, contract right and management right of rural land are separated into three rights, with ownership belonging to the collective, contract rights belonging to farming households, and management rights able to circulate in an orderly manner, which plays a positive role in promoting the transformation of farmers' assets into capital. Recently, the Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council made specific arrangements for deepening the reform of the rural collective property rights system, proposing pilot reforms of rural land expropriation, market entry of collectively operated construction land, and the homestead system, and deepening the reform of the rural land contracted management system. Among them, it clearly points out that the basic approach to homestead system reform is: on the basis of safeguarding farmers' usufructuary rights to homestead land obtained according to law, reform and improve the rural homestead system, explore new mechanisms for farmers' housing security, clearly define farmers' property rights in housing, explore a paid use system for homestead land and a voluntary paid exit mechanism, and explore effective ways to mortgage, guarantee and transfer farmers' property rights in housing. Some localities have already carried out some exploration in this regard. For example, Chongqing established a rural land exchange in 2008 to pilot land coupon trading. Over the 7 years of the pilot, farmers exited homestead land and transferred more than 200,000 mu of land, adding more than 70,000 mu of cultivated land, which both increased farmers' income and met the demand for urban construction land. At the present stage, close attention should be paid to the progress of relevant reforms and timely summaries and judgments should be made. This concerns whether farmers' property income can be increased, whether agriculture can develop smoothly, and further whether the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects can be achieved on schedule.
Another important way to increase farmers' income is to further increase farmers' wage income, and this requires letting farmers settle down in cities and towns. Over the past 10-plus years, although China's urbanization construction has made great achievements, due to reasons such as inadequate reform of the fiscal and tax systems, housing prices in many cities are abnormally high, and it is difficult for the people to buy homes relying on normal wage income, which has greatly reduced residents' purchasing power and life satisfaction. Fundamentally solving such problems requires comprehensively deepening reform, and if migrant workers are to gain a firm foothold in cities and towns in the short term, in addition to relevant supporting institutional reforms, the most direct and effective way is to enable them to buy homes and settle down in cities and towns through the transfer and realization of rural homestead land and housing. Therefore, on the basis of unified registration of immovable property and a sound property tax (real estate tax), giving farmers' homestead land and housing certain commodity attributes is an important channel for increasing farmers' property income.
Promoting Two-Way Flow of Urban and Rural Resource Factors
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed that upholding coordinated development requires correctly handling several major relationships in development, one of which is promoting coordinated urban-rural development. In the last 10-plus years, China has entered the track of rapid urbanization, and various resource factors such as labor and capital have surged toward cities, which is an inevitable process of economic development. However, due to institutional and structural reasons such as the household registration system and the land system, resource factors have long been in a one-way flow from rural areas to cities. This is different from the process in ordinary market economy countries of gradually realizing urbanization under conditions of free two-way flow of resources, and it is also incompatible with the requirement of letting the market play a decisive role in resource allocation. It blocks the channel for market resources to feed back into rural areas, making it more difficult to change the urban-rural dual structure. To promote the two-way flow of resource factors between urban and rural areas and promote coordinated urban-rural development, it is necessary to reform the rural land system, the household registration system and so on, so that resource factors can flow back to rural areas under the action of market mechanisms. Some people worry that the entry of industrial and commercial capital into rural areas will lead to problems such as land consolidation. This concern has some merit, but it cannot be used to block resource factors from flowing to rural areas through market channels, still less to delay reforms of the rural land system, the household registration system and so on. The correct approach is to simultaneously design and implement another layer of basic institutional arrangements, namely deepening the reform of the fiscal and tax systems. Among them, what is crucial to the optimal allocation of resource factors between urban and rural areas is the improvement and implementation of the property tax. The property tax, including on rural immovable property, can be implemented first, and tax regulation and management can be carried out on immovable property for non-agricultural uses. This can both effectively limit according to law the side effects of industrial and commercial capital flowing into rural areas and promote the two-way flow of resource factors between urban and rural areas and coordinated urban-rural development. This also shows that in the process of comprehensively deepening reform, special attention needs to be paid to the systematic, holistic and coordinated nature of reform.
Supporting the Healthy Development of Rural “Internet Plus”
Mass entrepreneurship, mass innovation and “Internet Plus” are of great significance to building a moderately prosperous society in all respects in rural areas. In today's countryside, on average fewer than 4 residents include one internet user, and “Internet Plus” can play a huge role in promoting rural economic development. For example, in August this year, wheat-producing areas such as Henan suffered natural disasters before the wheat harvest, and the quality did not meet the state's purchasing and storage requirements, so farmers could not sell even millions of jin of grain despite price cuts. At the same time, some enterprises making industrial alcohol and feed wanted to buy cheap grain as raw material but could not find sources. Information asymmetry led to massive waste and caused huge economic losses to farmers. If there were an authoritative and convenient internet trading platform for agricultural products, such situations would be greatly reduced, farmers could increase their income, and enterprises would also benefit. Internet companies are already making efforts in this regard. Relevant departments should closely follow new changes and new trends in enterprises, the market and science and technology, and actively support the healthy development of rural “Internet Plus”.