Where should people-centered urbanization draw its strength from?

According to media reports, with the convening of the first meeting of the inter-ministerial joint conference on advancing new-type urbanization, the "Plan for Adjusting the Criteria for Classifying City Sizes" and other measures will enter the implementation stage.

The new city-size standards disclosed in the reports differ both from the wording in the abolished 1989 "City Planning Law" (the original law was replaced by the "Urban and Rural Planning Law" that took effect in 2008, but since no corresponding standards appeared in the latter, the old ones continued to be used in practical work), and from the standards in the "National New-Type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)" just promulgated in March this year (the 1-5 million population range was divided into two tiers, 1-3 million and 3-5 million; the former requires "reasonable relaxation" of population management, while the latter requires "reasonably determining the conditions for settlement").

The disclosed new standards are:

Cities with an urban population below 500,000 are defined as small cities. Those with an urban population of 500,000-1 million are medium cities. Those with an urban population of 1-5 million are large cities. Those with an urban population above 5 million are megacities.

This broadly conforms to the new current reality of China's urbanization.

Then, if we compare the relevant wording of the "National New-Type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)", we can find that the government's differentiated requirements for population management policies for cities of different sizes are respectively:

"Comprehensively lift" settlement restrictions in designated towns and small cities, "orderly lift" settlement restrictions in medium cities, "reasonably lift" settlement restrictions in large cities, and "strictly control" the population scale of megacities with an urban population above 5 million.

New-type urbanization: what is new about it?

Although compared with the past semi-chaotic and uncertain state, the current city-size standards and corresponding population management policies are further clarified, which is a major progress. But in my view, there are still some problems. The most important of these points directly to the root of new-type urbanization as "people-centered urbanization".

Where is new-type urbanization "new"? Specifically, it is "new" in the "citizenization of rural migrant population" proposed by the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and "new" in "full coverage of basic urban public services for the resident population".

The former actually addresses the issue of urban settlement for the rural migrant population (of course not limited to this), while the latter targets the reality that "rural labor flowing between urban and rural areas for employment is a long-term phenomenon", so that the family members of migrant workers who cannot yet settle in cities can equally share the basic public services of urban residents, including the right to education for children who migrate with them, public employment and entrepreneurship services, social security such as pensions and medical care, basic medical and health services, and housing security.

If the former is understood as a "ceiling requirement" (settlement), then the latter is a "baseline requirement" (public services); otherwise it would not be the deliberately defined "new-type" urbanization.

New-type urbanization: where does the momentum come from?

In this way, the problem focuses on this "point": above the baseline and below the ceiling, what exactly are these "non-basic public services"? Is their "gold content" enough to generate the momentum for "citizenization of the rural migrant population"?

If the momentum is insufficient and migrant workers remain satisfied with "amphibious living between urban and rural areas and migratory bird-like movement", then when will the task of "people-centered urbanization" (at least the first "100 million people" among the "three 100 million people" mentioned by Premier Li) be completed? The final result may still be "year after year, mountains and rivers remain the same", and the survival of migrant workers and the management state of urban society will still be "the same old prescription" and "the same soup with a different label".

I fully understand the necessity of gradual reform; one bite never makes a fat person. But at the same time, we must also understand the basic law of social reform under market economy conditions - in the natural world, potential energy can be converted into kinetic energy; the same is true in social governance: we must honestly follow the principle of material interests, use the potential energy generated by interest differentials and convert it into kinetic energy, and through realizing and buying out interests, guide the joint participation of the parties concerned or stakeholders, thereby achieving the expected goal of social progress.

Specifically on this point of "people-centered urbanization", good wishes alone are not enough; we must also simultaneously solve the "bridge and road" problem for reaching the ideal state. That is, in accordance with the spirit of free migration - "let farmers who are willing to enter cities enter cities, and let urban residents who are willing to go to the countryside go to the countryside" - implement (as proposed by the Zhejiang Provincial Government) the eight-character policy of "the three rights go to the person (household), and the rights follow the person (household)", and advance reform of the rural property rights system.

Then, on the basis of "interest inducement" rather than "government mobilization", let hundreds of millions of farmers "move" themselves and actively participate in the process of "people-centered urbanization". At this time, supplemented by matching city-size standards and differentiated population management policies, a truly meaningful "substantive turning point" will occur.