What to Do About Rural Hollowing Out? A Full Analysis of the Challenges and the Ways to Resolve Them
With the rapid advance of industrialization and urbanization, a large rural population has moved to cities and towns, especially large cities, causing the phenomenon of rural hollowing out to worsen day by day, and it has gradually evolved from population hollowing out into hollowing out of population, land, technology, industry, services, culture and public facilities as a whole. Some rural economies and societies have fallen into overall decline and desolation, especially in rural areas in relatively economically backward regions. The intensifying hollowing out of rural areas has brought a series of challenges to the rural economy, public services, culture and social order, not only severely restricting the sound development of rural community building, but also adversely affecting the healthy development of China's urbanization.
Rural hollowing out brings a series of severe challenges
The massive transfer of rural labor not only forms the hollowing out of the rural population, but also produces a series of chain reactions——the loss of talent in the agricultural industry, the lack of social assistance for left-behind groups, the severe destruction of the overall rural layout, and the lack of successors for rural cultural development. Therefore, rural hollowing out reveals the overall decline of China's rural areas and brings severe challenges to rural social governance.
⟦NL> The loss of talent in rural industrial development leads to population hollowing out. A large number of young and middle-aged rural laborers have flowed into cities and towns, causing tremendous changes in the size and structure of the rural population. Young people who have skills, understand business operations and are good at management are increasingly scarce, leaving rural industrial development without the necessary intellectual support, agricultural infrastructure construction and maintenance without people to do the work, and the degree of mechanization and intensification of agricultural production difficult to raise. This has caused large amounts of arable land to be abandoned or underused, made modern industrial development in rural areas extremely difficult, and left both food security and the transformational development of agriculture facing enormous challenges.
The lack of social assistance for left-behind groups leads to service hollowing out. A large number of young and middle-aged rural laborers go out to work, the structure of the left-behind population is severely imbalanced, and the difficulties of elderly care and care for left-behind children in rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. Many rural areas, to varying degrees, show "no one to rely on in old age" and "no one to depend on in childhood." Because the rural social pension security and social assistance systems themselves are still imperfect and socialized elderly care institutions and facilities are lacking, the difficulties faced by left-behind elderly people are mainly solved by themselves. As for left-behind children in rural areas, because they lack face-to-face communication and interaction with their parents for a long time, problems in physical and mental health, study and schooling are prominent, and psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, paranoia, sensitivity and strained interpersonal relationships are even more serious.
The severe destruction of the overall rural layout leads to land hollowing out. On the one hand, more and more farmers go to cities and towns to work and buy homes, and even convert to urban household registration, causing their original homesteads to lie idle. On the other hand, farmers still face numerous difficulties in settling down in large cities, while small and medium-sized cities and towns have relatively limited appeal to farmers because of a lack of job opportunities and public services. As a result, farmers are more inclined to build new houses in their own villages, causing one household to have multiple homes, chaotic village layouts and the phenomenon of land hollowing out.
The lack of successors for rural cultural development leads to cultural hollowing out. After farmers go out to work and are influenced by modern industrial civilization and urban civilization, they will consciously or unconsciously make cultural choices of acceptance and rejection, move closer to modern civilization, gradually accept and internalize urban culture, and reject and break away from their original local culture. Under the impact of information network technology, urban culture gradually penetrates and strengthens in rural areas. Few farmers are willing to pass on the original distinctive rural culture, and local culture is gradually being marginalized. The fine qualities of traditional rural culture, such as valuing loyalty, valuing family and valuing local belonging, are gradually fading, and rural culture that has continued for several thousand years is facing the danger of gradually disappearing.
Taking multiple measures to resolve the difficult problem of rural hollowing out
Resolving rural hollowing out is a long-term and difficult challenge. Only by strengthening urban-rural coordination, doing a good job in rural development planning, innovating the rural land transfer system, effectively advancing land transfer, cultivating new-type farmers, improving rural public services, and forming a joint internal and external force for cultural inheritance can the problem of rural hollowing out be effectively solved.
Cultivating new-type farmers is the inevitable way out to resolve the hollowing out of the rural population. The source of rural hollowing out lies in the massive loss of rural labor, and rural economic and social development lacks the necessary labor force. Therefore, introducing and bringing up all kinds of specialized talent, attracting returning migrant workers to find employment and start businesses, and cultivating the next generation of farmers who have the ability and willingness to base themselves on rural economic development are the top priorities in dispelling rural hollowing out. By vigorously developing modern agriculture, expanding new functions of agriculture and developing rural tourism, promoting the development of ecological agriculture and sightseeing agriculture, expanding rural employment space, and keeping high-quality rural labor in rural areas.
Improving the scope and quality of rural public services is the inevitable choice for solving the hollowing out of rural services. Based on the value appeal of fairness and justice, all citizens should have the right to equally enjoy the basic public services provided by the government. To improve rural public services, the first step is to increase financial support and investment in rural areas, strengthen the construction of public service facilities in rural communities, and gradually realize the equalization of urban and rural public services. Second, starting from the rural population structure, targeted services should be provided for empty-nest elderly people and left-behind children, the social security system for rural elderly people in medical care, elderly care and minimum living security should be continuously improved, and the standards of subsidies and security should be gradually raised. Increase investment in education, strengthen the construction of rural boarding schools, and provide convenient accommodation for left-behind children. At the same time, methods such as government funding, social volunteering and neighborhood mutual aid can be adopted to establish social worker teams or service stations for rural elderly people and children, providing services such as daily care, emotional comfort and psychological counseling to left-behind elderly people and children in rural areas.
Doing a good job in rural development planning is an effective way to break through the hollowing out of rural land. Making full use of rural land requires planning as the precondition, the "leading force" and the crucial first step. It is necessary to start with optimizing land use planning, and according to different types of hollowed-out villages, comprehensively consider economic, social and ecological benefits, do a good job in village spatial layout and industrial development, adopt models of merging, relocation or transformational governance, focus on advancing ecological migration and relocation projects, combine rural homestead consolidation with small town construction, and combine the expansion of central villages with the merging of natural villages, so that village construction neither wastes land nor fails to meet the production and living needs of the broad masses of farming households, promote the clustered development of villages, and guide rural residents to gather moderately in central villages and central towns.
Forming a joint internal and external force for cultural inheritance is the fundamental way out to break through the hollowing out of rural culture. Rural cultural construction is a process of mutual coordination between external supply and internal reception, and the two promote each other and neither can be missing. Therefore, to break through the hollowing out of rural culture, the first step is to increase investment in rural cultural construction, advance the construction of comprehensive cultural service centers in townships and towns, and truly give play to the cultural supply, service and management functions of township cultural service centers. Second, taking villages as the foothold, cultivate the main inheritors of rural cultural construction, consolidate the mass foundation of rural cultural construction, and enable rural cultural supply and inheritance to truly gain the recognition and acceptance of villages. Third, ensure that the external supply of cultural construction is unified with the internal cultural needs of villages, combine rural cultural protection with tourism, strengthen the publicity of local culture, and let urban and rural residents participate together in the protection and inheritance of local culture.