How to promote the urbanization of farmers nearby and in place

1

Full employment is the premise and an important driving force of urbanization

Moderator: Since the reform and opening up, China's urbanization rate has risen from 17.9% to 53.7%, an average annual increase of 1.02 percentage points. How do you view this achievement? In the process of the development of new urbanization, what aspects can be further adjusted and improved?

Guest: Since the reform and opening up, China's urbanization work has indeed achieved achievements that are obvious to all. Urbanization is a natural historical process that accompanies industrial development, in which non-agricultural industries gather in cities and towns and the rural population concentrates toward cities and towns. It is an objective trend in the development of human society and also an important symbol of a country's modernization. In the process of rapid urbanization, as large numbers of farmers move into cities and towns, the urban consumer group keeps expanding and consumption potential keeps being released. At the same time, the entry of the rural population into cities has also created conditions for the smooth resolution of the issues relating to agriculture, rural areas and farmers. China's per capita arable land is 0.1 hectares, and the average household arable land is 0.6 hectares, far below the level of large-scale operation. When farmers go to cities to work, on the whole this provides space for large-scale land operation.

The role of rapid urbanization in China's economic and social development needs no elaboration. However, in the process of advancing new urbanization, we should also make some adjustments and reflections in our thinking. We should recognize that full employment is the core content of urbanization and the first driving force of urbanization. Without employment there is no urbanization. Urbanization is the product of economic development and industrial development reaching a certain level. Therefore, urbanization itself should not become an independent development goal. If urban industries have not developed, have not released enough employment opportunities, and there is no sound social security system, then if we put up buildings and move farmers into cities, how will they guarantee their own livelihoods? This will create serious social problems.

Therefore, urban industrial development, with the secondary and tertiary industries releasing sufficient employment opportunities, is the precondition for advancing the entry of Chinese farmers into cities and realizing new urbanization. This relationship should not be reversed. In reality, some regions violate this important law in the course of development. For example, some places carry out large-scale village demolition and residential consolidation, gather farmers together, and “force farmers upstairs”. Some towns and cities also engage heavily in real estate development, but because employment has not kept up, even when the houses are built they can only become unpopular “empty cities” and “ghost cities”, causing enormous waste of resources. These lessons must be deeply reflected upon; urbanization must never be like pulling up seedlings to help them grow.

2

The household registration barrier and family separation are the main obstacles to urbanization development

Moderator: At present, China's urbanization rate of the permanent resident population is 53.7%, while the urbanization rate of the household registration population is only about 36%, a gap of 17.7 percentage points. Why does such a gap exist, and what does this gap mean? Apart from this issue, what other problems do you think China's current urbanization still poses for farmers who go to cities to work?

Guest: The urbanization rate of China's permanent resident population published by the National Bureau of Statistics is 53.7%, while the urbanization rate of the household registration population is only about 36%. The 17.7 percentage point gap means that about 200 million people in China live and work in cities for a long time but do not have urban household registration, and most of them are migrant workers and their relatives. The reason this phenomenon arises is largely that cities generally adopt an attitude of “welcome to work, refuse to grant household registration” toward migrant workers who come to the cities to work.

Since China launched market-oriented reform, the development of manufacturing and services in coastal cities and towns has rapidly released large numbers of employment opportunities, thereby driving China's urbanization process. After gaining freedom of migration, large numbers of migrant workers first came to the first-tier large cities and coastal towns that developed first to work and make a living. The first-tier large cities represented by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are the cities with the strongest employment release capacity in China and the ones that attract the most migrant workers for employment. But these large cities, on the one hand, open their doors to welcome farmers to work in the cities and take on dirty, hard and tiring jobs that urban residents find difficult to bear and yet cannot do without, such as construction, sanitation, domestic service, catering and hauling; on the other hand, they often maintain a distant and rejecting attitude toward migrant workers' rights to obtain household registration and enjoy social security and other “citizenization” rights. This itself shows that China's household registration management, social security and other aspects have clearly lagged behind the market-driven urbanization process, and this chronic problem has still not been fully broken through.

Because of the existence of this phenomenon of “welcome to work, refuse to grant household registration”, when migrant workers who come to the cities to work reach a certain age, their physical strength declines, and they can no longer do some dirty, hard and tiring work, they are often forced to leave these large cities where they have worked for many years, either to drift to other cities or simply to return home to farm. Either way, they can never settle down permanently in these large cities. Migrant workers have made enormous contributions to the development of the cities. Therefore, this attitude of refusing the citizenization of migrant workers is very unfair to farmers and migrant workers, and even more unfavorable to the country's long-term development. Of course, on the other hand, the capacity of first-tier large cities is indeed objectively limited. In the future, hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers will leave the countryside, but the first-tier large cities, including provincial capitals, can accommodate only about 1/3 of them, and the rest can only find ways in small and medium-sized cities. But even so, first-tier large cities should set a correct example on the issue of the citizenization of migrant workers and shoulder the responsibility of civilized development.

In addition, migrant workers going out to work involves long-distance migration and being unable to reunite with their families for a long time, which is also a considerable social problem. Large numbers of migrant workers in the central and western regions must migrate very long distances to obtain employment opportunities. This causes large-scale “waves of migrant workers” at the beginning and end of each year, resulting in enormous transportation costs and social costs. Apart from this, migrant workers cannot return home for a long time, causing husbands and wives to live apart and fathers and children to be separated, which brings suffering to tens of millions of farmer families.