Reexamining the Coordinated Development of Urban and Rural Areas from the Perspective of a Two-Oriented Society

Building a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society and establishing a new type of urban-rural relationship require coordinated urban and rural economic and social development. The report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized that “resolving the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers is the top priority of the whole Party's work, and the integration of urban and rural development is the fundamental way to resolve the ‘three rural’ issues.” Therefore, we must adhere to the principles of “industry nurturing agriculture and cities supporting rural areas” and “giving more, taking less and loosening control,” increase support for agricultural and rural development, and gradually break down the dual urban-rural system that divides city and countryside.

I. Challenges Facing the Coordinated Development of Urban and Rural Areas

At present, China has entered the mid-stage of industrialization. The equilibrium of the traditional agricultural society has been completely shattered, and the whole society is undergoing rapid change and comprehensive transformation. Based on this reality, and against the broader backdrop of building a two-oriented society, the coordinated development of urban and rural areas still faces a series of challenges.

1. High-quality resources are shifting to the cities. County areas are where the “three rural” issues arise, and they are also the main battlefield for resolving them. Coordinated urban-rural development should proceed from the principle of intensive land use, focus on county seats and central towns, give them preferential treatment in construction funds and land-use quotas, and work to strengthen the ability of county seats and central towns to concentrate industry and population and to drive rural development. However, the current flow of urban-rural factors is unreasonable and distribution is unfair, which restricts county economic development. This is mainly manifested in two aspects. On the one hand, resource distribution is unfair. At present, the distribution of urban and rural resources is carried out mainly in two ways: market distribution and government distribution. An analysis of the two distribution situations shows that the former, to be sure, finds it very difficult to achieve unity between urban and rural economic and social benefits and to balance efficiency and fairness; the latter has also failed to take into account all levels of urban and rural economic and social development, and exhibits obvious one-sidedness and unfairness, most prominently in that it gives more consideration to economic development and less to social undertakings, more consideration to the construction of physical things and less to human development, and more consideration to near-term development and less to sustainable development. On the other hand, the direction of resource flow is unreasonable. This is most prominently shown in the loss of high-quality rural labor, the loss of rural land, and the severe shortage of rural financial resources. In particular, in recent years the four major commercial banks have on a large scale withdrawn and merged institutions and outlets at and below the county level, creating to a certain extent a “vacuum state” in rural finance. Rural funds have been siphoned off by financial institutions and flowed back into the cities, resulting in a serious lack of rural science and technology and information and in information asymmetry.

2. Polluting urban industries are shifting to rural areas. The core content of industry nurturing agriculture is to rely on the tax revenue provided by non-agricultural industries concentrated in the cities to support agriculture and provide necessary subsidies to farmers engaged in agricultural production, thereby adjusting the national economic structure and promoting positive interaction between urban and rural areas. Rural areas taking on industrial transfer from the cities is one form of industry nurturing agriculture, and it can accelerate the pace of rural industrialization and strengthen county economic power. However, because most of the transferred enterprises are low-cost-dependent “two-high” (high-input, high-pollution) industries lacking the motivation and financial strength for technological upgrading, it is hard for rural areas that lack funds and projects and are seeking development to avoid trading the environment for development and accepting the simple transfer of “two-high” industries. At present, as urban pollution control efforts intensify, polluting enterprises such as chemical, coking and papermaking plants are shifting to rural areas, and urban domestic sewage and industrial wastewater are being discharged into rural areas. The rural ecological environment is already very fragile, and in addition rural areas lack the relevant supporting pollution-control facilities and are seriously short of environmental protection funds and personnel, so industrial wastewater flows wantonly into farmland and rivers without treatment. The water pollution and land pollution brought by this “pollution going to the countryside” have seriously affected the living health of rural residents and have also restricted the sustainable development of the rural economy.

3. Urban construction planning is unscientific. At present, the overall level of urban construction in China is rather low, and it has failed to form strong support and services for urbanization development, which to a certain extent has led to a further widening of the urban-rural gap and intensified incoordination between regional and urban-rural development. Coordinated urban-rural development should rely on towns and cities, and through urban-rural interaction and innovation in systems and mechanisms, advance the modernization process of agriculture, rural areas and farmers and achieve comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable rural development. However, in the process of promoting a new type of urbanization, contradictions and problems of one kind or another are inevitably bound to arise. First, urban construction in some places seeks excessive scale and speed. In some areas, small town construction tries to rival cities and suffers from excessively high standards, and a few places even advance small town development by means of image projects and large-scale demolition and construction, or one-sidedly pursue making towns bigger, better and more beautiful while neglecting industrial development, which increases development costs and affects rural development. Second, urban construction springs up everywhere. Some places focus urbanization on the number of small towns being developed, blindly expand townships and merge towns, and some places even set up development zones blindly, causing massive waste of land resources.

II. Establishing New Concepts for Coordinated Urban-Rural Development

Coordinated urban-rural development means that, on the premise of rapid urban development, urban industrial economies drive the development of the rural economy, gradually narrowing the urban-rural gap, with cities leading rural areas, coordinating with each other and promoting each other to achieve common development. The advancement and development of urban-rural coordination absolutely require simultaneous innovation in concepts, thinking and behavior. So, under the “two-oriented” background, what new concepts should coordinated urban-rural development have? In summary, they are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. Stimulate urban and rural vitality by developing “two-oriented” industries. The issue of development and its costs is a major choice that must be faced in taking on industrial transfer. The famous Kuznets environmental curve makes an inverted U-shaped curve assumption, namely that environmental quality continuously declines and deteriorates with economic growth, but at a certain turning point environmental quality will continuously improve with economic growth. Western developed countries basically followed just such a path of “pollute first, treat later” and paid a heavy price for it. But today, we have no reason to repeat the same mistakes and pay the corresponding price for them. With the rapid development of the urban economy and society, many industries that rely on inputs of resources and energy are facing rising costs of production factors such as water, electricity, land, raw materials, labor and investment in environmental treatment. The steadily climbing cost of enterprise investment and operation will ultimately cause the market advantages of the past to be completely lost. The life-cycle nature of industries objectively requires these types of industries to transfer to township areas with relatively better land resources, environmental capacity and labor conditions and lower production and operating costs. But in this way, some non-“two-oriented” industries that are high in energy consumption, high in material consumption, high in pollution and labor-intensive transfer to townships in a low-level manner, directly plundering rural land, labor, natural resources, clean air and clean water. This is a typical “high-cost transfer,” which will ultimately bring about the transfer of a series of ecological and social problems. Therefore, whether taking on industrial transfer from large and medium-sized cities or cultivating and developing distinctive local industries in townships, full consideration must be given to the carrying capacity of the region's resources and environment.

2. Coordinate the contradictions of urban-rural development through “moderate balance.” Looking across the trajectory of China's economic development, one can clearly see that economic development has followed the basic approach of industry first and agriculture later, and cities first and rural areas later. Industrial development and the formation of urban civilization came to a large extent at the expense of the interests of agriculture and farmers, thus creating the urban-rural dual economic structure in which modern industry and traditional agriculture coexist in China. Under the action of market mechanisms, factors usually gather toward the area of greatest benefit. Compared with industry, agriculture is constrained to a greater degree by factors such as natural, geographical and climatic conditions, and this inherent disadvantage makes it difficult for agriculture to accumulate on its own the large amount of capital needed for production. Thus, with the support of the dual forces of policy and market, a series of unbalanced developments have appeared in rural income levels, living consumption levels, culture and education, public medical and health care, and social security, resulting in a situation where urban and rural areas have “the same illness but different treatment,” “the same life but different price” and “the same person but different employment.” The traditional agricultural sector lags behind the modern industrial sector in terms of personnel quality and material equipment as well as in technical level and labor productivity, and the urban-rural development gap is widening further. The development experience of developed countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Japan shows that once industrialization and urbanization reach a certain stage, it is necessary to implement the strategy of “industry nurturing agriculture” and “cities supporting rural areas” and to pay attention to moderately balanced development. On the whole, China already possesses the basic conditions for resolving the urban-rural dual economic structure. On this basis, we should proceed from the scientific outlook on development, adopt a moderately balanced development strategy, and achieve comprehensive coordinated development of the urban and rural economy, society, culture, politics and ecology, so that both farmers and urban residents can share in the benefits of the increase in social material and spiritual wealth brought by the coordinated advancement of industrialization and urbanization.