Agricultural modernization for whom? The purpose of development is worth pondering

I am very glad to have such an opportunity to exchange views with everyone. Listening to the speeches of Teacher Tang Zilai, Dean Li Zhenyu and Dean Zhang Shangwu felt very warm. Just now Teacher Tang conducted a small survey and found that very few people here were actually born and raised in rural areas, and very few have even spent a month there. But 80% of my graduate students come from rural areas, and my requirement for my students, especially doctoral students, is to live in a village for more than 400 days. We originally did not understand urban planning and urban-rural planning. From the perspective of the three rural issues (agriculture, rural areas and farmers), we felt that many problems could be discussed.

This conference asked me to give a speech. I think there are many specific issues that can all be discussed. Every sentence Teacher Tang and Dean Li just said triggered many points I could discuss, but time is very limited, so I will still start from the theme of my speech. The title of my talk is——Agricultural modernization for whom?

The theme of today's seminar is “Beautiful Countryside.” Beautiful countryside is a vision, a wish. Modernization is also one of our wishes. We want to realize China's modernization and realize the modernization of agriculture, but behind this beautiful countryside, how do we achieve this goal? There are probably many paths to take.

What I am talking about today is precisely that there is a great gap between the beautiful countryside and what we generally understand as modernization. The discipline of planning must be open, must be pluralistic, and must have an understanding of the complexity of the entire country. To have such an understanding, I hope to use my following remarks to discuss agricultural modernization from a perspective that differs somewhat from mainstream views. Whose agricultural modernization is agricultural modernization, after all? How do we realize agricultural modernization? Is agricultural modernization a means or a goal? What exactly are we supposed to do? If we carefully investigate further, there will be many different conclusions.

China is especially complex, and its territory is especially vast. For example, Shanghai, relative to the entire country, does not have a large enough territory or a large enough population, yet it is especially important because it is our country's economic center. In the developed eastern coastal regions represented by Shanghai, the rural areas within them have already become part of urban belts and have enjoyed many benefits brought by urban development. This makes the rural areas of Shanghai and the rural areas in urban belt regions possess characteristics completely different from other rural areas. Farmers here also have needs completely different from farmers elsewhere. Such needs ultimately manifest as interests. Such enormous interests in coastal regions and urban belt regions make our past institutional arrangements unsuitable, and thus institutional innovation is inevitably required. Therefore, there is a great deal of institutional innovation along the coast, which attracts the interest of scholars, the public, and central policymakers. For example, family farms in Songjiang, Shanghai, are very important, and they exist not only in Shanghai but also in Guangzhou and Wuhan. Our relevant departments or scholars go to investigate and study them, and then say, why can't such good experience be promoted nationwide? Similarly, many experiences emerge in the inner suburbs of large cities and in coastal urban belts, not only agricultural experiences such as family farms, but also community-building experiences. In the end, these experiences are often promoted and applied nationwide.

But if the experience obtained from research in these regions is simply promoted nationwide in the form of policy, major problems may arise. Because there are enormous differences between our eastern coastal regions and the vast central and western regions, and enormous differences also exist between the south and the north. These are all objective facts. Apart from coastal regions and the inner suburbs of some mega-cities, many rural areas still lag behind in economic development. Traditional agricultural methods remain effective, and the demand for new methods is not very strong.

Therefore, there is no problem with beautiful countryside as a vision. I have also seen good planning experience and models, and I think doing this in some developed regions is very good. But the beautiful countryside we see mostly involves high-end, grandiose planning, and then concentrates a great deal of resources in the form of projects. As a result, villages in very poor areas, which account for nearly 80% of the total, receive even fewer resources, and these regions encounter many problems. I rarely see planning for these regions in newspapers or the media, because they are too atypical, but precisely because they are too atypical, they are highly representative. If we simply place the experience of developed coastal regions onto the whole country, you will find that it does not apply. Institutions then become institutions in the newspapers, institutions in the CCTV News broadcast. If forcibly promoted, many jokes will appear.

What I will discuss next is a critical speech and also critical thinking. I hope that through my perhaps not necessarily correct approach, I can give everyone some inspiration. In the next 20 to 30 years, who will be the main body of our agriculture? Who will farm the land? This is a very big question. National leaders have also asked who will farm the land, and this is indeed a big question. Yesterday I exchanged views with Teacher Luan and mentioned that during research in South Korea, I encountered an 80-year-old man and woman farming more than 100 mu of land without needing to ask others for help, which is very interesting. We often say there are no young people farming, and today the average age of the rural labor force is 47, which is too old. But if, according to South Korean experience, people can still farm into their 80s, then someone who is 47 today will be in their 50s 10 years later and in their 60s 20 years later. That is to say, they can still farm for 30 more years. In that case, China would not need to worry at all about no one farming the land. Because by this calculation, China's 2 billion mu of cultivated land would be solved by only 2,000 elderly couples. China currently has at least more than 200 million rural laborers, and even a 90% reduction would be fine. But we generally believe that farming at 80 and farming 100 mu seems impossible, because during the busy farming season people simply cannot bear it. So in this sense, who will farm the land is not a false question.

Then the question arises: why can an 80-something man and woman in South Korea still farm 100 mu, but in our case it seems impossible? A few years ago, when I was doing rural research, local people also said that there is no difference in output between 50-year-olds and 70-year-olds farming, and both are higher than large-scale operations. This is very interesting. It shows that our farmers can also farm in old age. People of 50, 60, 70, and even 80 can all still farm, and the output is reliable, even higher than large-scale operations. In that case, there is no future problem of who will farm the land. Then why is the output of 70-year-olds farming not lower than that of 50-year-olds? Why can a South Korean couple in their 80s still farm more than 100 mu? Because full mechanization has been achieved. In the place I investigated, local officials and residents revealed that the local busy farming season requires only about a week, with transplanting and harvesting fully mechanized. The rest of the time is field management. Whether management is good or not and whether returns are high or low are one's own business. There is even an interesting phenomenon in field management: watching the crops grow is a very fulfilling thing, and every day one feels especially satisfied psychologically. Under such circumstances, how could industrial and commercial capital-style industrialized agriculture possibly compete with the smallholder approach?

Today in cities, migrant workers over 50 are generally called elderly migrant workers. There are now 47 million elderly migrant workers. Of these, only a little more than 10 million actually leave their hometowns to work. The others work near their families, combining work and farming, so they can take care of both family and agriculture, which is more convenient. But this phenomenon is also related to the fact that it is relatively difficult for elderly migrant workers to find work outside. People in cities who are 50 have a hard time finding work, and by 55 it is almost very difficult to find work. So although many migrant workers actually want to stay in the city, because the city is of course much more comfortable than the countryside, many cannot find work, find it hard to survive, and have no way to live a decent life, so they have no choice but to go back.

In that case, we must leave farmers a way back, so that when they return to farm they still have a certain income, and also many harmonious relationships between people and nature, between people and people, and between people and ecology, and also a sense of fulfillment. Going back is then a good choice, living a life of returning to one's roots. Preserving a way back for farmers who fail in the city is a very foundational, very basic, and very important right for them. If we promote the transfer of land toward large-scale operations and toward industrial and commercial capital, and carry out agricultural modernization based on such large-scale operations, then when farmers fail in the city and cannot live decently there and want to go back, is it still possible? There is no possibility at all. They cannot go back. If failed farmers cannot go back, then there will be a powder keg in the cities, and the stability of the cities and even the country will become a problem.

Therefore, can we provide modern equipment for the agriculture of this group of people, for the smallholder economy, and for this group of migrant workers who may return to rural areas, and realize agricultural modernization for them? This is a key question. If we can do this, our society will be very stable, our development will have more flexibility, we will have more room to respond to financial crises, and as a large developing country, we will have many more ways to escape the middle-income trap.

However, our entire society seems to pay more attention to high-end, grandiose things. Everyone is willing to look at the good things. We all compare Chinese agriculture with American agriculture, and at the very least with Taiwan. No one compares with India, and no one compares with those worse off than us. But in this way, it is very likely that we will make decisions that fundamentally do not conform to our actual conditions, bringing great problems to our future stability and development. So today I plan to mainly discuss five aspects.

One: Is the “strong, rich and beautiful” agricultural modernization our goal?

The 2015 Central Document No. 1, “Several Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Increasing the Intensity of Reform and Innovation and Accelerating the Construction of Agricultural Modernization,” proposed the “strong, rich and beautiful” goals: “If China is to be strong, agriculture must be strong; if China is to be rich, agriculture must be rich; if China is to be beautiful, rural areas must be beautiful.” A large amount of national resources is flowing to rural areas, and rural society is undergoing profound changes. But the agricultural modernization currently being promoted nationwide may involve goals and means that go beyond what is appropriate, and even the goal of agricultural modernization may be wrong. The core problem is that it is divorced from China's national conditions and agricultural conditions. Should we modernize right now, or 10 years later, 20 years later, or 30 years later?

Which places can carry out beautiful countryside planning, and which places should adopt conservative planning? This is a question that needs serious consideration. Some regions want to demolish and rebuild all 8,000 villages in a city. They say the biggest difficulty is lack of money, and that with money things are easy. In that case, what is lacking is not a small amount of money. Demolishing houses costs money, building houses costs money, all this money is lacking, and there is never a time when nothing is lacking. Of course, the planning I am talking about is not the planning done by the comrades present here, but those plans by our officials that are a bit like the Great Leap Forward. The central government's agricultural modernization requires “strong, rich and beautiful.” “Strong, rich and beautiful” is very good, but can it definitely all be achieved?

The document of the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee stated, “In the deepening development of industrialization and urbanization, synchronously advance agricultural modernization, abbreviated as the synchronization of the three modernizations.” Synchronously advancing agricultural modernization means that farmers enter the cities, land is transferred out for large-scale operations, and then, with state support, the modernization of production is advanced on the land under large-scale operations. Since modernization is to be carried out, land transfer rights must be stable. Farmers who enter the cities will not come back and cannot come back. Rural areas will then undergo a thorough change in their living structure, causing rural areas to undergo thorough, unprecedented changes.

The formulation of the Eighteenth National Congress is a bit more complex: “Adhere to the path of new industrialization with Chinese characteristics, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization; promote the deep integration of informatization and industrialization, the benign interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and the mutual coordination between urbanization and agricultural modernization; and promote the synchronous development of industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization.” Now there is the addition of the synchronization of the “four modernizations.” The document of the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee contains more statements on agricultural modernization, such as “accelerate the construction of a new agricultural operating system,” “encourage contracted management rights to be transferred on the open market to specialized large households, family farms, farmer cooperatives, and agricultural enterprises; encourage and guide industrial and commercial capital to go to rural areas to develop modern planting and breeding suitable for enterprise-based operations; encourage rural areas to develop cooperative economies; and encourage social capital to be invested in rural construction.”

The 2013 No. 1 Document proposed: “Strive to build a new agricultural operating system that combines intensification, specialization, organization, and socialization. Continue to increase the scale of agricultural subsidy funds, with new subsidies concentrated in main production areas and advantageous production areas, and tilted toward new types of production and operation entities such as specialized large households, family farms, and farmer cooperatives. Adopt various methods such as rewards and subsidies to support joint-household operations, specialized large households, and family farms.” Obviously, we hope that through the market economy, industrial and commercial capital will go to the countryside or rural areas will spontaneously form large planting and breeding households. But then a problem arises: these large-scale agricultural operations that hire labor often cannot compete with 70- or 80-year-old men and women——as long as the social service system is good. Why can they not compete? Because as long as large-scale operations are carried out, labor must be hired. Hiring laborers to farm is a job, and the sense of responsibility is crucial. But those elderly men and women farming grain are doing their own thing, and they even treat it as a hobby, with a sense of fulfillment. Their labor input can be不计成本. Under such circumstances, how could you possibly compare with them? If you cannot outcompete them in farming, what do you do? The state says it will give money, support the new agricultural economy, and defeat the smallholders through state support.

The 2014 Central Document No. 1 proposed: “Guided by solving the problem of how to farm the land well, accelerate the construction of a new agricultural operating system; guided by solving the resource and environmental constraints of insufficient land and water, deeply advance the transformation of the agricultural development model; guided by meeting the demand for eating well and eating safely, vigorously develop high-quality and safe agricultural products, and strive to blaze a path of new agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics featuring advanced production technology, moderate operating scale, strong market competitiveness, and sustainable ecological environment.”

Overall, all these documents have continuously proposed “strong, rich and beautiful,” and not only “strong, rich and beautiful,” but also proposed vigorously supporting rural areas in developing the tourism industry and developing the sixth industry. In addition to central documents, all sectors of society are now also very concerned about agriculture and agricultural modernization. Every year during the Two Sessions, the hottest topic among NPC deputies is: who will farm the land? Is land abandonment serious? Who will feed China? And everyone also holds this view: can elderly agriculture feed China?

Thus, the whole society has such views and worries. The government also says that current agriculture is very dangerous and that food is unsafe. Advancing agricultural modernization has become an important measure, and it is oriented toward cultivating new types of operating entities, with land transfer as the most basic condition. As soon as the central government advocates something, local governments will certainly go farther than the central government. A principal responsible person of a provincial party committee said not long ago that new agricultural operating entities are the main force in advancing the development of agricultural modernization, and that cultivating new agricultural operating entities should be pursued just like attracting investment and promoting enterprise development.

So what problems do current smallholder agriculture have? Very few of the people present come from rural areas, so you may not understand the situation. In my area, many people come from rural areas, including my own students. From our exchanges, we found that in fact there is very little land abandonment in rural areas. I have done little research in Shanghai, but it seems there is no phenomenon of land abandonment here either, which is similar to what I found in research in many places across the country. When I did research in Qianjiang, I asked local farmers: “Is there any abandoned land here?” They said: “How could there be abandoned land? Farmers just do not have land to farm. Who would abandon land? Land is extremely precious. How could there be abandoned land?” In this way, the efficiency of large-scale operations cannot match the smallholder approach of elderly men and women, and there is very little land abandonment in rural areas, so grain production is in fact very safe. Although we keep talking about the food security issue, the result is that food has been unsafe until today, and all the grain depots are completely unable to hold it all. In the past, grain prices rose every year. Last year grain prices could not rise, because we had already surpassed international grain prices.

So is there then absolutely no phenomenon of land abandonment? That is not entirely the case. Last year we conducted research in several major districts of Wuhan, and the leaders of the relevant agricultural bureau said that land abandonment in Wuhan was very serious, and ultimately promoted land transfer. Why was there abandonment? Because it is very close to Wuhan, farmers are unwilling to farm the land. By casually working in Wuhan, they earn much more money than farming. But our research found that Wuhan indeed has land abandonment, but one must look at exactly where the land is being abandoned! In high hilly areas near mountainous regions, that land cannot be farmed. Planting ten times yields a harvest once; in nine years out of ten there is drought, and in nine years out of ten there is no harvest. But if this land is left to industrial and commercial capital, industrial and commercial capital does not want it——even farmers cannot farm it, so how could I farm it? Industrial and commercial capital all wants good land, very fertile land. But farmers are unwilling to transfer this land, so the government mobilizes them. When mobilizing, the rent is very high, 1,000 yuan per mu. If capital grows grain on it, can there be a harvest? In the end, can there be returns? Either the government subsidizes, and the government cannot afford to subsidize. In places like those in Wuhan with land abandonment, capital cannot get in, while where capital can get in, it is all land that farmers are willing to farm. This is very important.

I was very surprised by my research in Qianjiang. In the past four years or so, one third of the land in Qianjiang has been transferred to large households and capital, and this has been long-term irreversible transfer planned through the market. This phenomenon is actually the same across the country. But after transferring to capital, what then? Capital does not make money farming, so in the end the government subsidizes, and the government continuously subsidizes. In the end, a large amount of land ends up in the hands of capital and large households. For the grain grown by our smallholders, if the government does not subsidize, it will not work, and the government's burden becomes very heavy.

As for the agriculture that everyone considers very unsuccessful, I think comparing the agriculture of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, China with that of the mainland leaves no basis for comparison. In these places, governments generally spend a great deal of money, while the number of farmers is very small, and in the end farmers have not become rich either. China was still collecting taxes from farmers ten years ago. From the perspective of agriculture, we are not bad, but from another angle, we do indeed have some problems, namely unsafe food. What I am talking about here is unsafe food, not the food security issue, because the latter is mainly about having enough to eat and not starving to death. For today's China, what is more important and more fundamental is the issue of food safety.

Smallholder production has no problem in supporting Chinese agriculture, but it forms a direct conflict with the agricultural modernization process of cultivating new types of agricultural operating entities. When a great deal of capital goes to the countryside, it inevitably squeezes out the production and even living space of smallholders. If these industrial and commercial capitals cannot make money, and local governments cannot afford to subsidize them, they will flow away, bringing many problems. We now still have more than 200 million households and 600 million farmers, including 200 million laborers. Our agricultural modernization, the current modernization dominated by new industrial and commercial operating entities, requires most of these smallholders to go to the cities. But they cannot enter the cities in a short time, and many migrant workers still need to return to rural areas. The smallholder mode of production is their source of employment and income. But now industrial and commercial capital is squeezing out farmers' employment space over large areas and for long periods, which will make it impossible for many farmers to return. If a large number of migrant workers cannot return, or if in an economic crisis more migrant workers need to return home in a short time, this modernization tendency that strengthens de-grainization and de-agriculturalization contains quite a few hidden risks.

On October 25, 2015, the Ministry of Agriculture issued an opinion on strengthening supervision over the leasing of rural land by industrial and commercial capital and on risk prevention, from which it can be seen that the central government attaches great importance to this. The document clearly requires that in rural land transfer, coercive orders must not be used, administrative orders must not be used, and blind direction must not be used. It emphasizes that there must be strict thresholds for industrial and commercial capital leasing rural land. The central government's attitude is very different from before. General Secretary Xi emphasized not long ago that rural land transfer must proceed step by step, adapt to local conditions, and must not launch a Great Leap Forward, must not use coercive orders, and must not use blind direction.

The central government has already recognized this problem. In this way, there is tension between the general public and news media, on the one hand, and the central government's emphasis on promoting land transfer and cultivating new types of operating entities, and on that basis developing agricultural modernization, on the other. Once these hidden dangers reach a certain level, or even certain problems appear, the central government will issue emergency notices.

Therefore, we still have not actually thought clearly about today's approach to agricultural modernization. Exactly how to do it and who the main body is, these understandings are still not in place. An important reason for this is that we have not truly and fully understood our national conditions and agricultural conditions. This year's Central Document No. 1 advocates the sixth industry and requires increasing investment in rural tourism and leisure infrastructure, enhancing online and offline marketing capabilities, improving management levels and service quality, studying and formulating supportive policies on land, finance, and operations to promote rural tourism and leisure development, implementing tax preferential policies, integrating rural resources, and increasing farmers' income. Ultimately, in order to increase farmers' income and for “strong, rich and beautiful,” the profitable part of rural tourism and rural leisure is supported through financial, tax, fiscal, and land policies. There are many problems in this. I believe that “strong, rich and beautiful” is not the goal of our agricultural modernization. Our whole society's understanding contains great misdirection and misunderstandings in this regard. My view may not be correct. Comrades doing planning must have critical thinking. My criticism here can also count as critical thinking and can be discussed.