Rural community building is not about massive demolition and construction: interpreting the key points of the policy

Rural community building both echoes the development of urbanization and continues the same thread as the new socialist countryside construction. Its rich connotations include not only the joint contribution to and sharing of services such as villagers' self-service, government public services and social welfare services, but also a living environment in which the functions of production, ecology and daily life develop in a coordinated way; it must not be narrowly understood as turning farmers' living patterns into urban-style communities

A few days ago, the General Offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Further Advancing the Pilot Work of Rural Community Building", proposing to respect the principal position of rural residents, effectively safeguard and protect rural residents' democratic political rights, lawful economic interests and social life rights and interests, and let rural residents gain more tangible benefits from rural community building.

Rural community building helps promote the intensive use of rural land and change the drawbacks of traditional village layouts, which are scattered, poorly environmentally maintained and weak in function. But in rural community building in some places, it is simply understood as abolishing villages and merging residences, going in for massive demolition and construction; some force farmers to move upstairs to live in concentrated housing, using the opportunity to adjust land planning, which leads to some good farmland being converted to non-agricultural use.

Rural community building both echoes the development of urbanization and continues the same thread as the new socialist countryside construction, and it must not be narrowly understood as turning farmers' living patterns into urban-style communities. It should focus on the real needs of rural residents, rely as much as possible on the original sites when doing planning, and avoid increasing the burden on farmers, while at the same time paying attention to rural flavor and reflecting rural characteristics, being cautious about cutting trees and demolishing as few houses as possible, so as to create rural communities with supporting services, industrial support and local characteristics.

At present, rural community building is at the initial pilot stage, and administrative promotion can quickly solve the problem of investment in infrastructure construction. However, rural community building should pay even more attention to giving play to the role of villagers' self-governance, guiding farmers to participate actively, and proceeding in accordance with local conditions and from the bottom up. For densely populated areas, the "one village, multiple communities" model can be used to disperse the population and improve the efficiency of public services; for sparsely populated areas, the "concentrated community building" model can be used to gather the population and save the cost of public services; and building concentrated residential points is mainly applicable to areas on the outskirts of cities. Which model to adopt specifically should be decided according to actual conditions and by the farmers themselves.

In advancing rural community building, it is not enough to focus only on improving farmers' living conditions. If the mode of production does not change and income does not rise, the cost of improving living conditions is very likely to become a burden on farmers. Community planning must fully consider whether it is convenient for farmers to carry out production and whether supporting industries and jobs can be guaranteed. If rural communities are built but nearby employment cannot be achieved, community farmers will still run off to the cities to work, and the new communities will become new hollow villages.

In advancing rural community building, it is also necessary to solve the problem of "same village, different rights" in rural communities and promote harmonious coexistence between the registered rural population and the non-registered population. In the past, people mostly emphasized the issue of equalizing public services for urban migrant populations. Nowadays, in some rural communities in developed coastal areas, because of the higher level of industrialization and per capita income, the rural migrant population has gradually increased and has even exceeded the registered population of the village. Living in the same area and contributing to the same rural development, yet having quite different rights and treatment, is not conducive to social harmony and stability in rural areas. Therefore, while making the public services pie bigger, rural community building must also solve the public service problem of non-registered residents well.

In short, rural community building has rich connotations, including not only the joint contribution to and sharing of services such as villagers' self-service, government public services and social welfare services, but also a living environment in which the functions of production, ecology and daily life develop in a coordinated way. Only in this way can rural community building become the link connecting new socialist countryside construction and urbanization development, and let farmers gain more tangible benefits from it.