The current urban-rural dual structure is a protection for farmers
One,
In rural surveys, chatting with elderly people, the elderly show immense gratitude to the state. The reason is that farming no longer requires paying taxes, life is good, and the state's New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme and New Rural Social Pension Insurance, which were previously unimaginable, have now become reality. Under the New Rural Social Pension Insurance, all elderly people over 60 years old receive a minimum state subsidy of 55 yuan per person per month, which is truly better than having a son.
The gratitude of rural elderly people stems not only from the fact that the current rural period is perhaps the most materially abundant era in Chinese history, but also from their very realistic comparisons. When rural elderly parents are capable of cultivating land, they generally support themselves, and their children do not bear the obligation of supporting their parents. When they grow older and no longer cultivate land (though they generally still engage in some courtyard economy), they hand over their contracted land to their children, and the children begin to bear the obligation of support, giving their elderly parents about 500 jin of grain per year and twenty to thirty yuan per month as pocket money. Twenty to thirty yuan per month is not even enough for oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar, clearly too little, but our nationwide surveys found that this is about how much cash children give their parents, so elderly people across the country all “have food to eat but no money to spend.” Now things are better: the state's New Rural Social Pension Insurance actually pays all rural elderly people who have reached 60 years old a minimum of 55 yuan per month, 110 yuan per month for a couple, which is higher than the support fees given by children. How could rural elderly people not be grateful to the state!
A mere 55 yuan per person per month under the New Rural Social Pension Insurance actually makes rural elderly people feel the state is better than their sons, and they are endlessly grateful. This stands in sharp contrast to many people's view that the New Rural Social Pension Insurance provides too little protection for farmers, and to the distrust and even dissatisfaction with the state that pervades the internet. Why does such a contrast form? What does this contrast mean? This question deserves in-depth discussion.
Two,
One reason a mere 55 yuan per month under the New Rural Social Pension Insurance makes rural elderly people so grateful is that in the past rural elderly people did not receive this kind of free old-age security provided by the state for them; their old-age support depended on the family. If their children were unfilial, the elderly were absolutely helpless and could even only choose to die. Now, although the New Rural Social Pension Insurance is not much, it can considerably alleviate their difficulty of lacking money to spend. They did not have vested interests in the past and had not formed rigid interests. Now the state gives them money every month, which is like a windfall from the sky, so of course they are very happy and grateful. Conversely, if 55 yuan were now paid every month, rural elderly people would have formed the expectation that the state pays money, and the expectation that the state pays more and more, and if the state no longer paid, the elderly would be extremely disappointed and would feel abandoned by the state.
Rural elderly people have not formed vested interests, and a mere 55 yuan per month under the New Rural Social Pension Insurance makes them very satisfied. This shows that Chinese social structure still has great elasticity. It is precisely this elastic social structure that gives China enormous space for interest adjustment, enables China to respond to various crises and difficulties, and allows it to use its main resources for developing strategic industries and completing industrial upgrading, thereby escaping the middle-income trap.
Three,
What is currently being promoted is integrated urban-rural old-age security, meaning old-age security is no longer divided between urban and rural areas but is integrated and the same. In reality, however, there may indeed still be some differences between urban and rural areas. Before the New Rural Social Pension Insurance policy was implemented, when rural elderly people could still farm, they farmed themselves and did not need support from their children. By age 70, an elderly couple farming two or three mu of land and doing some side work raising chickens had an annual income of several thousand yuan, with basically no expenses, because they grew their own vegetables, lived in their own houses, and were self-sufficient, spending no money at all. They even had to support their children every year, especially by giving New Year money to their grandchildren. By their late 70s, when farming became difficult, they handed the land to their children, and their children gave them several hundred jin of grain per year and twenty to thirty yuan per month. Although not wealthy, life was still manageable, because although they no longer farmed, they still grew vegetables, still raised pigs and chickens, and still engaged in side work within their capacity. Even at 90 they still tended vegetable gardens and raised chickens, because they had land, and because they needed to gain meaning from labor and to exercise their bodies through labor.
Urban elderly people differ from rural ones in that cities no longer have land that allows them to be self-sufficient, and in cities almost everything costs money. With only a few dozen yuan per month for old-age support, urban elderly people would simply starve.
In this sense, with the same old-age security, rural elderly people would exclaim that the money is more than they can spend, while urban elderly people would complain bitterly that they would starve.
Four,
Migrant workers who go to cities enter cities when young, hoping through their own efforts and luck to settle decently in the city. But the current stage of China's economic development determines that the vast majority of farmers entering cities cannot obtain the employment and income conditions for decent urban settlement. Fortunately, when migrant workers enter cities, their parents are still working in rural areas. Farming income is not much, but it is enough to solve the problem of food and clothing. Young people entering cities, if they make money, that is best; if they do not, it does not matter, as long as they can support themselves. Young people who have just entered the city are almost all “moonlight clan,” because their parents do not rely on them to earn money for support, and they also need to have a luxurious romance while young. Once they have children and face pressure, they become frugal and consider the long term. If they are lucky, they gradually become part of the city and may even bring their elderly parents to the city.
——Of course, such examples are extremely few, accounting for less than 5% of migrant workers entering cities. If their luck is not good enough, they send their children to rural parents to raise, and the couple focuses wholeheartedly on earning money in the city, placing their life hopes on their children. They do not bear heavy economic pressure to support their parents. If by middle age they still cannot settle decently in the city, they begin to consider returning home. Although being able to settle decently in the city is best, if they cannot obtain at least a decent life in the city, they would rather choose to return home. This rural hometown at least has land to farm, is the place where they were born, the place where generations of ancestors lived, and the final destination of life. Only upon returning home do they have a sense of security physically and spiritually. Relatives and friends are all in their hometown, and the hometown is a society of acquaintances, and in this society of acquaintances there is social capital. In short, if they cannot make it in the city, returning home is a good choice.
Five,
That is to say, it is precisely the existence of rural areas, precisely the fact that land is in farmers' hands, that enables farmers, through the “semi-industrial semi-farming structure based on intergenerational division of labor,” to obtain free space to move back and forth between urban and rural areas. Even when a financial crisis like that of 2008 occurred, with 20 million migrant workers losing jobs, these migrant workers could all smoothly return home. If unemployed migrant workers had no hometown to return to, the state would have to provide them with unemployment insurance. If the state could not provide unemployment insurance for such a huge number of people, these people would be unable to survive, and social disorder and even social turmoil, leading to the economic collapse expected by some Westerners, could all arrive.
Obviously, the existence of a system that can accommodate farmers unable to enter cities and allow farmers who fail in cities to return home gives Chinese social structure great elasticity and enables it to withstand various crisis shocks. Rural areas have become the stabilizer and reservoir of China's modernization.
Almost all developing countries face this dilemma: as the economy grows, the interest demands of various groups, strata, and classes in society also rise rapidly. The surplus from economic growth is distributed among various groups, strata, and classes, and all distributed interests become vested interests and form an irreversible rigid interest structure. The result is that the speed of growth of economic surplus cannot keep up with the growth speed of the interest demands of various groups, strata, and classes. Intense interest struggles and hard collisions of interests arise among different groups, strata, and classes, thereby producing severe social division and political struggle. Development leads to instability, economic growth is affected by political conflict, and the middle-income trap is thus formed.
Between China's urban and rural areas there exists a protective structure for farmers. Such a structure keeps Chinese social structure elastic and enables the state to distribute the surplus of economic growth with relative autonomy, thereby making it possible for China to escape the middle-income trap.
The current urban-rural dual structure does not restrict farmers from entering cities. Whether farmers can enter cities and settle there is mainly no longer an institutional issue, but an issue of whether they can find opportunities in the market economy. In other words, the only obstacle to whether farmers can enter cities today is whether they have the employment and income conditions to settle decently in cities. But the urban-rural dual structure still restricts urban people from going to the countryside and restricts capital from going to the countryside, for example, urban people cannot go to rural areas to buy farmers' houses.
Some people say that not allowing urban people to go to the countryside restricts the effective allocation of resources, is not a market economy behavior, and will reduce the efficiency of social resource allocation. The question is, are farmers' housing, homestead land, and land contractual management rights currently market economy production factors, or do they also serve as farmers' basic security and social insurance? If they are farmers' basic security and social insurance, can basic security be freely traded? Obviously, basic security cannot be freely traded, because this is the bottom line of survival. Urban people buying houses in rural areas is because they need to find a store of value for surplus capital, or want an extra leisure place in the countryside, while for farmers, once they lose their rural housing, they can no longer return home if they fail in the city, and they lose the foundation on which to settle down and live. It is not one farmer, but at the current stage of China's economic development, the vast majority of 900 million farmers cannot possibly settle decently in cities. If farmers lose the retreat of returning home, China's current elastic social structure will no longer exist. In the narrow and cramped space of cities, intense conflicts among different groups, different strata, and classes will also become commonplace. At that time, because rural areas, the stabilizer and reservoir of China's modernization, have been lost, talking about escaping the middle-income trap will be impossible.
We must recognize that the current urban-rural dual structure is no longer a structure that deprives farmers of interests, but a protection for China's largest disadvantaged group, farmers. This protective structure is the key to why Chinese social structure can still maintain tremendous elasticity to this day.
Six,
Currently, Chinese academia and policy departments have serious misunderstandings about urban-rural relations. The most typical manifestation of this misunderstanding is the so-called Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient is calculated based on income. In a modern market economy country, all factors can be calculated as income, so the income levels of different groups in that country can be relatively accurately counted and the Gini coefficient calculated. But current rural China not only has a huge self-sufficient economy, but also has rural housing, homestead land, and land contractual management rights that have not entered market transactions. These interests that have not entered market transactions and thus have not been calculated into farmers' income are of course not interests that originally did not exist, but have truly improved farmers' quality of life and happiness index. If such welfare were calculated using purchasing power parity, the current Chinese grassroots coefficient would probably be very different. And if China were simply compared using the Gini coefficient of market economy countries, then of course there would arise the puzzlement Western media constantly asks about: why has China not yet collapsed?
Starting from a misunderstanding of rural farmers' lives, attempting through the policy practice of urban-rural integration to break down the current urban-rural dual structure that in fact protects farmers, the result will certainly be the destruction of the “institutional dividend” that is currently most important for maintaining the elasticity of Chinese social structure. Once there is no longer a protective urban-rural dual structure, once rural homestead land, housing, and land contractual management rights that serve as rural basic security and social insurance are treated as property that can be taken to the market for transaction, in order to “effectively realize” farmers' property rights, then farmers who fail in cities will lose their retreat. If any crisis occurs again in China's development process, there will be a huge structural force lacking elasticity to intensify its severity. The result will be that Chinese society falls into the middle-income trap of violent conflict among different groups, different strata, and classes, and into the iron law that development leads to instability.