Why Is Rural Modernization More Important Than Farmers Moving to Cities?
The State Council issued the "Opinions of the State Council on Further Promoting the Reform of the Household Registration System," formally proposing that China will establish a unified urban-rural household registration system and eliminate the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural household registration. The urban-rural dual household registration system has caused enormous inj
The State Council issued the "Opinions of the State Council on Further Promoting the Reform of the Household Registration System," formally proposing that China will establish a unified urban-rural household registration system and eliminate the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural household registration.
The urban-rural dual household registration system has caused enormous injustice and has long been criticized. Abolishing the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural household registration is a major breakthrough in the reform of China's household registration system. This realization of equal urban-rural rights is truly a transformation unseen in decades. In fact, at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, the central leadership put forward a sixteen-character guideline for the urbanization strategy, namely “industry promotes agriculture, cities support the countryside, industry and agriculture benefit each other, and urban and rural areas are integrated.” At present, urban-rural integration has already been achieved institutionally.
However, the rural household registration has been abolished, but the countryside still exists. In reality, a huge gap still remains between urban and rural areas.
Although the rural household registration will be abolished, and at the same time more rural people will move into cities, the population that once lived in rural areas still makes up the vast majority of China's population. Therefore, the role of China's countryside cannot be measured by economic function alone. For a large agricultural country like China, the countryside, for the vast majority of the population, is, as the well-known scholar Ye Yijian said in his book "China in Nostalgia," a spiritual homeland that people cannot abandon. At the same time, the existence of the countryside is also necessary for the diversification of humanity's ways of living. The harmonious coexistence of the countryside and nature can offer cities many insights.
But urbanization, which has been held in high expectations, also takes eliminating the countryside and building cities as an achievement. When measuring the development level of a place, how many farmers have been transferred to cities is often taken as an important indicator. The entry of capital, especially real estate capital, has changed the countryside's original way of life. And forcibly incorporating the countryside into the industrial system has triggered more and more backlash; the increasingly intense conflicts in land requisition and demolition are a warning.
At present, China's rural areas have eight major focal points of contradiction:
First, the prices of agricultural products have not been liberalized, and the intuitive feeling is that farming does not make money. The future response should be to increase subsidies so that ordinary people can make money, rather than letting ordinary people charge to the front and hold down grain prices. The state should make the sacrifice, not the farmers.
Second, agricultural production subsidies are insufficient. When I returned to my hometown to visit relatives, I found that, calculated per person, a farmer's annual subsidy is only about 100 yuan. In an environment of inflation, this subsidy standard is too low. The response is to raise the subsidy standard in the future.
Third, agriculture has not been modernized, nor has it been incorporated into the modern industrial system. When Taiwan, China became one of the “Four Asian Tigers” in the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of food industries such as Uni-President and Dingxin drove agricultural development and brought agriculture into the modern industrial system. At the beginning of its founding, Uni-President's slogan was “benefiting the local area.” The response is to achieve agricultural modernization and incorporate agriculture into the modern industrial system. We can learn from the agricultural development model of Taiwan, China, to create large numbers of agricultural by-product bases, food industry bases, and tourism industry bases.
Fourth, rural infrastructure is backward; one manifestation is that some reservoirs have not been repaired for decades. The response is to shift future infrastructure investment toward rural areas. Nationwide, at least about 1 trillion yuan in agricultural basic investment is needed.
Fifth, rural medical care and social insurance are lacking. Decades ago, barefoot doctors everywhere solved the medical problems of the people at the bottom, but at present, the former barefoot doctors are basically unemployed or have gathered in townships, counties, and cities to open clinics, and vast rural areas have no hospitals. How can farmers solve the problems of distant and difficult access to medical care? Farmers' social security standards are low; who will bear the burden in the future?
Sixth, the problem of rural education. Frequent school bus accidents are concentrated in rural areas, and rural education is severely inadequate. The response is to appropriately give back educational resources to rural areas, and at the same time open up educational opportunities for farmers' children in cities, such as abolishing household registration restrictions for the college entrance examination and establishing schools for the children of migrant workers.
Seventh, the household contract responsibility system has caused low efficiency. At present, due to policy restrictions, China's agricultural efficiency is very low. Since reform and opening up, the so-called household contract responsibility system with remuneration linked to output has, in the process of actual implementation, been only a “half-finished” approach— only contracting, with no output-linked remuneration. Apart from state farms, the vast rural areas of China have used a small-scale, piecemeal labor model based on the family as the unit, and the mechanization that once prevailed was almost interrupted.
The fundamental reason for the low efficiency in rural areas is that land cannot be transferred. At present, rural land is not valuable, and even when it is requisitioned, only a very small part is compensated to farmers. If farmers had the right to dispose of land, the value of farmers' land would increase greatly, farmers would no longer be poor, and land would become their greatest asset.
As for the response, rural areas should implement the separation of ownership from management rights and income rights. Farmers, with the family as the unit, could choose free cooperation to form farms, distribute dividends according to shares or the size of the farmland, realize true “output-linked remuneration,” and establish large farms. After agriculture becomes large-scale and mechanized, it can not only reduce costs but also extend the industrial chain, develop agricultural product processing industries, and engage in diversified operations.
Eighth, farmers' social status is low. China's farmers are not only inferior to urban residents in economic income, but more seriously, farmers all belong to the bottom of society, and the issue of identity recognition was previously overlooked.
The countryside of China in the future should have three characteristics: economically, agriculture should be incorporated into the modern industrial system; in the social sphere, rural welfare should be aligned with that of cities; and at the same time, China's invisible identity hierarchy should be eliminated, so that farmers truly become independent citizens of China.
For a long time, China's grain prices have not been fully marketized, and at the same time agricultural subsidies have also been inadequate. The 18th National Congress mentioned that in the future rural areas need to achieve agricultural modernization. Achieving agricultural modernization and incorporating agriculture into the modern industrial system is far more far-sighted than moving farmers to cities, and also more in line with reality. The modernization of agriculture itself is also more reasonable than industry completely replacing agriculture. From the perspective of national strategy, it also more easily creates a balanced industrial structure and enhances the ability to resist economic turmoil. The United States is not only the world's largest service industry country, but also the world's largest agricultural country. A multi-layered industrial structure gives the U.S. economy enormous capacity to withstand risk and strong self-adjustment ability, which is also one of the secrets of the United States remaining dominant in the world for many years.
The modernization of rural areas themselves is more important than the transfer of farmers to cities. One major characteristic of agricultural modernization is integrating agriculture into the modern industrial system. The needs of modern farmers lie not only in economic development and achieving equal rights in property development, but also in the improvement of status and the realization of equal rights in social status and rights. Urban-rural equal rights is one of the important strategies for narrowing China's income distribution gap and filling in the social class gap.
Luo Tianhao (Researcher at the Commercial Science and Technology Quality Center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, author of "Major Cities of a Great Power")
The urban-rural dual household registration system has caused enormous injustice and has long been criticized. Abolishing the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural household registration is a major breakthrough in the reform of China's household registration system. This realization of equal urban-rural rights is truly a transformation unseen in decades. In fact, at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, the central leadership put forward a sixteen-character guideline for the urbanization strategy, namely “industry promotes agriculture, cities support the countryside, industry and agriculture benefit each other, and urban and rural areas are integrated.” At present, urban-rural integration has already been achieved institutionally.
However, the rural household registration has been abolished, but the countryside still exists. In reality, a huge gap still remains between urban and rural areas.
Although the rural household registration will be abolished, and at the same time more rural people will move into cities, the population that once lived in rural areas still makes up the vast majority of China's population. Therefore, the role of China's countryside cannot be measured by economic function alone. For a large agricultural country like China, the countryside, for the vast majority of the population, is, as the well-known scholar Ye Yijian said in his book "China in Nostalgia," a spiritual homeland that people cannot abandon. At the same time, the existence of the countryside is also necessary for the diversification of humanity's ways of living. The harmonious coexistence of the countryside and nature can offer cities many insights.
But urbanization, which has been held in high expectations, also takes eliminating the countryside and building cities as an achievement. When measuring the development level of a place, how many farmers have been transferred to cities is often taken as an important indicator. The entry of capital, especially real estate capital, has changed the countryside's original way of life. And forcibly incorporating the countryside into the industrial system has triggered more and more backlash; the increasingly intense conflicts in land requisition and demolition are a warning.
At present, China's rural areas have eight major focal points of contradiction:
First, the prices of agricultural products have not been liberalized, and the intuitive feeling is that farming does not make money. The future response should be to increase subsidies so that ordinary people can make money, rather than letting ordinary people charge to the front and hold down grain prices. The state should make the sacrifice, not the farmers.
Second, agricultural production subsidies are insufficient. When I returned to my hometown to visit relatives, I found that, calculated per person, a farmer's annual subsidy is only about 100 yuan. In an environment of inflation, this subsidy standard is too low. The response is to raise the subsidy standard in the future.
Third, agriculture has not been modernized, nor has it been incorporated into the modern industrial system. When Taiwan, China became one of the “Four Asian Tigers” in the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of food industries such as Uni-President and Dingxin drove agricultural development and brought agriculture into the modern industrial system. At the beginning of its founding, Uni-President's slogan was “benefiting the local area.” The response is to achieve agricultural modernization and incorporate agriculture into the modern industrial system. We can learn from the agricultural development model of Taiwan, China, to create large numbers of agricultural by-product bases, food industry bases, and tourism industry bases.
Fourth, rural infrastructure is backward; one manifestation is that some reservoirs have not been repaired for decades. The response is to shift future infrastructure investment toward rural areas. Nationwide, at least about 1 trillion yuan in agricultural basic investment is needed.
Fifth, rural medical care and social insurance are lacking. Decades ago, barefoot doctors everywhere solved the medical problems of the people at the bottom, but at present, the former barefoot doctors are basically unemployed or have gathered in townships, counties, and cities to open clinics, and vast rural areas have no hospitals. How can farmers solve the problems of distant and difficult access to medical care? Farmers' social security standards are low; who will bear the burden in the future?
Sixth, the problem of rural education. Frequent school bus accidents are concentrated in rural areas, and rural education is severely inadequate. The response is to appropriately give back educational resources to rural areas, and at the same time open up educational opportunities for farmers' children in cities, such as abolishing household registration restrictions for the college entrance examination and establishing schools for the children of migrant workers.
Seventh, the household contract responsibility system has caused low efficiency. At present, due to policy restrictions, China's agricultural efficiency is very low. Since reform and opening up, the so-called household contract responsibility system with remuneration linked to output has, in the process of actual implementation, been only a “half-finished” approach— only contracting, with no output-linked remuneration. Apart from state farms, the vast rural areas of China have used a small-scale, piecemeal labor model based on the family as the unit, and the mechanization that once prevailed was almost interrupted.
The fundamental reason for the low efficiency in rural areas is that land cannot be transferred. At present, rural land is not valuable, and even when it is requisitioned, only a very small part is compensated to farmers. If farmers had the right to dispose of land, the value of farmers' land would increase greatly, farmers would no longer be poor, and land would become their greatest asset.
As for the response, rural areas should implement the separation of ownership from management rights and income rights. Farmers, with the family as the unit, could choose free cooperation to form farms, distribute dividends according to shares or the size of the farmland, realize true “output-linked remuneration,” and establish large farms. After agriculture becomes large-scale and mechanized, it can not only reduce costs but also extend the industrial chain, develop agricultural product processing industries, and engage in diversified operations.
Eighth, farmers' social status is low. China's farmers are not only inferior to urban residents in economic income, but more seriously, farmers all belong to the bottom of society, and the issue of identity recognition was previously overlooked.
The countryside of China in the future should have three characteristics: economically, agriculture should be incorporated into the modern industrial system; in the social sphere, rural welfare should be aligned with that of cities; and at the same time, China's invisible identity hierarchy should be eliminated, so that farmers truly become independent citizens of China.
For a long time, China's grain prices have not been fully marketized, and at the same time agricultural subsidies have also been inadequate. The 18th National Congress mentioned that in the future rural areas need to achieve agricultural modernization. Achieving agricultural modernization and incorporating agriculture into the modern industrial system is far more far-sighted than moving farmers to cities, and also more in line with reality. The modernization of agriculture itself is also more reasonable than industry completely replacing agriculture. From the perspective of national strategy, it also more easily creates a balanced industrial structure and enhances the ability to resist economic turmoil. The United States is not only the world's largest service industry country, but also the world's largest agricultural country. A multi-layered industrial structure gives the U.S. economy enormous capacity to withstand risk and strong self-adjustment ability, which is also one of the secrets of the United States remaining dominant in the world for many years.
The modernization of rural areas themselves is more important than the transfer of farmers to cities. One major characteristic of agricultural modernization is integrating agriculture into the modern industrial system. The needs of modern farmers lie not only in economic development and achieving equal rights in property development, but also in the improvement of status and the realization of equal rights in social status and rights. Urban-rural equal rights is one of the important strategies for narrowing China's income distribution gap and filling in the social class gap.
Luo Tianhao (Researcher at the Commercial Science and Technology Quality Center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, author of "Major Cities of a Great Power")