Is the decline of rural areas really unavoidable?

Since industrialization, it has been a very common phenomenon for various resources to flow from rural areas to industry and cities. As long as industrialization is implemented, rural change is unavoidable. And to achieve a balanced state between rural and urban areas, the most fundamental thing is to narrow the cultural value differences between the two.

A few days ago, a friend posted photos on WeChat: after buying up bananas, the boss who contracted the land left behind large numbers of discarded white plastic bags in the fields. He joked, "Calling for solutions!" In recent years we have strongly encouraged the development of the "company + farmer households" model, because the advantage of this model is that the company brings farmers market demand and information, and at the same time organizes scattered farmer households into a large market. Everything looks fine, but as long as you do a simple calculation, you will find that the share of farmer households in this value chain is not high. This is like a train: the train is running, and no matter how fast it runs, those sitting at the rear are still at the rear. Whether it is the discarded plastic left behind from bagging bananas or the farmers' low share in the value chain, both show the awkward predicament of rural areas in industrialization. Since industrialization, whether in countries that industrialized first or in countries that industrialized later, it has been a very common phenomenon for various resources to flow from rural areas to industry and cities. Although Chayanov did not advocate viewing smallholders from the perspective of industrialization, the decline of rural areas to some extent seems unavoidable. I am an organic developmentalist. I believe that as long as industrialization is implemented, rural change is unavoidable, and populist criticism cannot change this path. This is what we often call the "secondary colonization" brought about by industrialization.

The reshaping of rural value, or the rise of ruralism, mostly occurs after rural shrinkage, that is, when agricultural GDP falls below 10% of total GDP, the economic significance of rural areas weakens and ruralism begins to revive. China is also following this trend. Because with the development of industrialization and urbanization, there is a gap between farmers' livelihoods and welfare and those of the urban population, so rural shrinkage is not merely an economic issue, but will evolve into a political issue. This has been very prominent in the development processes of Europe, Japan and South Korea. In these countries, farmers rely on state protection of their rights to obtain the capital for rural revival, and at the same time, with the development of rural construction, farmers are prompted to demand more support, and this process will ultimately form a urban-rural political equilibrium. The essence of this equilibrium is that the differences between urban and rural areas in income, social welfare and political rights gradually narrow, and once this equilibrium is formed, the so-called phenomenon of "secondary colonization" will basically disappear. In addition, I believe that achieving this equilibrium requires the support of developed industry, and a developed industry in turn requires a global market as its foundation. The situations of Europe, Japan and South Korea basically conform to this path. Therefore, in a certain sense, to a large extent, the rural revival of these countries is built on the economic exploitation of other countries.

Different from the situations of Europe, Japan and South Korea, China neither has the capital accumulated by Europe during its long stage of commercial and industrial capitalism, nor has it obtained large amounts of foreign aid in the early stage of development like South Korea. Therefore, the resources needed for our country's rapid industrialization can only be mobilized rapidly and on a large scale from rural areas, leading to a large outflow of resources in all aspects of rural areas and causing rural shrinkage, so that the trend of ruralist thought begins to appear. As I said earlier, as long as industrialization is promoted, the relative shrinkage of rural areas is unavoidable, so China's industrialization and urbanization are built on the basis of the enormous sacrifices of rural areas and farmers. In recent years, rural populist thought has surged, pointing directly at the current situation of the lack of farmers' rights and interests in our country, which also suggests that the time for forming a urban-rural political equilibrium is arriving.

My judgment is that urban-rural equilibrium seems to be a law of industrialization development, and we are also establishing this equilibrium. What I worry about is that two forces may affect the healthy development of this equilibrium. First, due to the influence of many factors, the external expansion of capital has been greatly restricted. For example, when I investigated private enterprises' investment in Laos in Yunnan, I found that there are too many obstacles hindering capital from going out. In recent years, capital returning to rural areas has been very obvious. This looks like a positive change, but in reality it is a kind of "involution" of development. In addition, external capital, with the help of the force of state developmentalism, is changing the social process of building equilibrium between rural and urban areas, and the result is another round of exploitation of rural areas. The new exploitation will cause many problems, such as environmental pollution from plastic waste everywhere, the relative decline of farmers' income, and disputes over land rights and interests, and so on. Second, new localism, the new movement of going to the countryside, and various "new ruralisms" continue to emerge, and this in fact will also bring negative effects to rural areas. The content of new ruralism is diverse: some are determined to transform rural areas, some take protecting ecology and culture as their goal, some encourage the middle class and elite strata to seek the lost "hometown" and seek a "spiritual paradise," and some aim to transform rural areas into new rural areas that provide new products for cities, such as farmhouse entertainment, and so on. These "new ruralisms" seem to be new driving forces for rural construction, but it is undeniable that in the process of establishing equilibrium between rural and urban areas, whether it is capital or the various externally appearing actions toward rural areas, all have a negative impact on the construction of rural-urban equilibrium. If rural areas continue to be treated as destinations for satisfying new urban consumption, then rural areas may become visible places of pollution and invisible garbage dumps for the urban spirit, that is, forming a new "secondary colonization." In this process, rural areas will once again become consumption sites for cheap industrial goods, while also providing cities with new cheap consumer goods such as air, leisure, green tourism, and so on. That is to say, rural areas remain at the lower end of the cultural value chain, while human capital and other capital will still flow to the higher end of the cultural value chain. Therefore, rural areas cannot enter a state of urban-rural equilibrium, ultimately leading to the decline of rural areas.

In order to achieve a balanced state between rural and urban areas, the most fundamental thing is to narrow the cultural value differences between the two. However, this still cannot completely solve the problem. Just as if the salary were all 1000 yuan, and you were asked to choose between a cleaner and a civil servant, most people would probably choose the latter. Therefore I believe that if a country is undergoing industrialization, and the process of industrialization has not been completed or has not been upgraded, that is, the development of industrialization and urbanization still depends on the supply of capital, labor and raw materials from rural areas, then rural construction is difficult. But since the value of rural areas to industrialization has declined to today's level, we should try to avoid the emergence of a new "secondary colonization" in rural areas.