How to Narrow the Urban-Rural Income Gap and Support Urbanization Development

Urbanization is a powerful driver of national economic and social development. The urbanization level of Liaoning Province has always been at the forefront nationwide, but along with the process of urbanization development, the income distribution gap between urban and rural residents in our province remains relatively large, and urban and rural incomes have not kept pace with the urbanization level. Against the backdrop of new-type urbanization construction, we should earnestly implement the "Opinions of the State Council on Several Major Policy Measures to Support the Revitalization of Northeast China in the Near Term," strive to improve the income distribution pattern, and narrow the urban-rural income gap, thereby boosting the urbanization construction of our province.

The Overall Guideline for Actively, Steadily and Solidly Advancing New-Type Urbanization Construction

Urbanization is a natural historical process and an economic and social development process that our country is bound to encounter in its development. To advance urbanization, we must proceed from the basic national conditions of our country's primary stage of socialism, follow the laws, and guide according to circumstances, so that urbanization becomes a development process of going with the flow and coming naturally. Therefore, advancing urbanization requires being both proactive and steady, and even more so solid, not acting blindly and recklessly, nor blindly following trends or launching a Great Leap Forward. Based on this, our province should intensify efforts to optimize the layout and form of urbanization. Gradually form a gradient urban network layout supported by the central urban agglomeration, with mega-cities as supporting points, and jointly composed of regional central cities, large cities, and small and medium-sized cities. Strive to improve the international comprehensive competitiveness of urban agglomerations and their capacity to gather resources and factors, and play an important absorbing role in the process of rural population transferring to cities and inland population transferring to coastal areas; Shenyang City should strive to become a national central city, Dalian City should gradually be built into a core city of the Northeast region, accelerating the enhancement of the radiating and driving role of mega-cities; further improve the population gathering capacity and industrial radiation and diffusion capacity of regional central cities.

To actively, steadily and solidly advance urbanization, we must adhere to a people-oriented approach, take the citizenization of migrant workers as the breakthrough point for raising the level of urbanization, and guide rural populations to smoothly and orderly enter cities for employment and settle down. Large cities should strengthen and improve population management, while small and medium-sized cities and small towns should relax the conditions for settling of migrant populations according to actual circumstances, and gradually convert agricultural transfer populations who meet the settlement conditions into urban residents. We should gradually resolve their urban household registration issues according to the actual circumstances of farmers entering cities. For migrant workers who already have the conditions for long-term residence in cities, they should be granted urban household registration so that they can reside in cities long-term. Household registration restrictions can first be lifted in small towns, and then pilot methods can be adopted to steadily advance the reform of the household registration system in central cities, gradually relaxing restrictions on household registration transfer. A unified urban-rural household registration management system should be adopted, and the birth population registration and vital statistics systems should be improved.

Safeguarding Farmers' Interests Is the Soul of People-Oriented New-Type Urbanization

Solving the problem of people is the key to advancing new-type urbanization. Judging from the current requirements of our country's urbanization development, the problem of people is mainly the problem of farmers. There are the following three focal points.

Reform the rural land system to increase farmers' property income. We should promptly carry out reform of the rural land use system, clarify the legal relationship between farmers and collectives, and explore the establishment of a distribution system for collective land returns between farmers and collectives. Let farmers enter cities with their land, so that farmers can still hold certain income rights after leaving the land, and can legally transfer them, smoothly realizing labor mobility and land transfer. For farmers who settle in cities and towns, according to their own wishes, retain their land management rights and allow them to operate and transfer for compensation according to law. We should further develop a tangible land market, build a platform for agricultural land market transactions, and gradually establish land trading centers networked across counties and townships. In this regard, the successful experience of land transfer service centers is worth promoting. Develop a "Rural Land Contracted Management Right Management System" to conduct plot information queries and statistics, achieving the four arrivals to households of contracted plots, areas, contracts, and certificates, with plot annotations precise and intuitive; increase service efforts, improve service levels, actively carry out land transfer information collection, publication, and transfer contract authentication work, expand the scale of land transfer, thereby promoting farmers' income growth and agricultural efficiency improvement; promote mortgage loans for rural land contracted management rights, and the government, through establishing a mortgage system for land contracted management rights and reaching risk compensation agreements with rural commercial banks, increases mortgage areas, expands loan amounts, effectively cracking the funding bottleneck problem of difficult rural financing, and effectively driving farmers to increase production and income.

Rely on the development of labor-intensive industries to broaden farmers' employment channels. As far as our province is concerned, first, relying on traditional industries such as equipment manufacturing and highly processed raw materials industries, build advantageous industrial clusters, extend industrial chains, and transfer labor-intensive industries and production links with low technical content and low technical added value to small and medium-sized towns, providing more employment positions for farmers entering cities. Second, accelerate the development of strategic emerging industries, promote energy conservation and emission reduction, develop a low-carbon economy, and vigorously expand green employment space. Guide and encourage labor-intensive enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, and micro enterprises to accelerate transformation and development, creating more employment positions. Third, fully leverage the promoting role of the tertiary industry in absorbing rural labor transfer employment and stabilizing urban employment, and encourage the development of traditional labor-intensive service industries and producer service industries in small and medium-sized towns, providing more employment opportunities for rural workers.

Strengthen education and training to improve farmers' employment competitiveness. We should attach great importance to rural vocational education, especially the construction of a vocational skills training system for migrant workers, to enhance their employment competitiveness. First, integrate vocational education and skills training resources, and support the rapid development of vocational education. Optimize the allocation of training resources such as urban and rural training venues, teaching equipment, and internship forces, comprehensively integrate training funds from various channels, and improve the sharing degree and utilization rate of education and training resources. Second, implement a project to improve the vocational skills of migrant workers. Establish a multi-level employment training system, conduct systematic vocational skills training for new rural labor forces, conduct short-term training on common knowledge for work and entrepreneurship and professional operational skills for rural workers and entrepreneurs, and encourage migrant workers who have already entered cities to participate in continuing vocational skills education and training. Third, establish a funding mechanism for migrant worker training featuring "government leadership, multi-party sharing, and responsibility at each level." Provide free training for rural labor forces so that they can be reasonably arranged; implement full free training for universal training, establish and improve an employer-payment mechanism for general labor service training, and build a cost-sharing mechanism with enterprises and individuals as the main body for continuing education and advanced training.

Promoting the Equalization of Urban and Rural Basic Public Services Is the Guarantee of New-Type Urbanization

Urbanization is the improvement of civilization and requires a public service system as a guarantee. Therefore, we should fully leverage the government's fiscal functions and establish a basic public service system that coordinates urban and rural areas. First, strengthen public financial investment in rural areas, raise the rural minimum living security standard and subsidy level, and achieve full coverage under dynamic management. Focus on improving the standards and quality of education and health services within county areas, and increase the construction of central schools and central hospitals in small towns. Increase budgetary education funds and fiscal investment in rural medical and health care year by year, and increase municipal-level fiscal support for social public services in rural areas. Second, carry out multi-level support work for migrant workers' housing. Improve the living conditions of migrant workers in their places of work, formulate minimum housing standards for migrant workers, and ensure that the housing provided by enterprises for migrant workers meets basic living conditions. The government can, through rent subsidies, provide low-rent housing and public rental housing for migrant workers who have long-term stable employment in urban enterprises, and expand the coverage of low-rent apartments and economical apartments. Third, improve the public employment service system covering urban and rural areas. Build a five-level employment service system at the provincial, municipal, county (district), street (township), and community (administrative village) levels with standardized management services, complete functional facilities, interconnected information, and a reasonable workforce. Establish a labor resource monitoring and statistics system to investigate and monitor the distribution of labor resources, skill status, job-seeking wishes, as well as the flow, direction, and labor income of rural labor transfer employment, and realize resource sharing through network platforms. Formulate relevant preferential and incentive policies in light of the actual conditions of counties (districts), guide the development of market entities such as labor service companies, labor service capable persons, and training institutions, give play to their positive role in transferring labor, and gradually establish and improve a socialized employment service system including employment information, consulting, job introduction, and training.