An Analysis of the Paradox of Rural Population Decline Amidst Expanding Area

As of 2014, China's urbanization rate had reached 54.7%, with a large rural population continuously migrating to cities. Theoretically, along with the outflow of population, villages should gradually shrink, but in reality, village size is expanding at an accelerated pace in a "pancake-spreading" and "crawling-along-roads" manner. Since 1978, China's rural population has decreased by approximately 150 million, while the cumulative area of newly built housing has increased by approximately 34 million mu, and is still expanding at a rate of about 1.5 million mu per year. Rural areas are exhibiting the abnormal phenomenon of "population decline, area expansion," which will not only hinder the healthy development of urbanization but also adversely affect national food security and the ecological environment.

The weakening and absence of cities' responsibility to "urbanize rural areas" has constrained the citizenization of agricultural migrant populations; it is necessary to strengthen urban-rural coordination so that the urbanization process truly becomes a process of citizenizing agricultural migrant populations.

The paradox of "population decline, area expansion" arises because, during urbanization, cities that should expand and rural areas that should not expand are expanding simultaneously. For some time now, cities have achieved a high concentration of resources and rapid expansion of scale, but their task of absorbing agricultural migrant populations to settle in cities and become urban residents has not been completed. The absence of urban responsibility means that migrant workers can neither regard cities as their home nor dare to give up their rural homesteads and houses. This is mainly manifested in the following: First, cities have retained the demographic dividend while sending away the demographic liability. The age of migrant workers entering cities in China is mainly concentrated between 18 and 45; migrant workers over 45 already face oversupply and diminishing employment opportunities. In terms of settlement policies, cities mainly absorb "big merchants, big academics, and big soldiers" as well as farmers from urban villages and suburban villages who have become urbanized due to land requisition, while migrant workers mainly engaged in manufacturing, construction, and traditional services "enter but do not settle." This situation effectively leaves the demographic dividend in cities while sending the demographic liability back to rural areas. If a binary divide between dividend and liability is further formed between urban and rural areas, it will become another "chasm" in China's effort to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and cross the middle-income trap. Second, cities have absorbed public resources but have not achieved shared services. In recent years, public resource allocation has tilted toward cities, and urban infrastructure and public services have been further improved. However, due to inadequate alignment of urban and rural basic public service systems, 270 million migrant workers entering cities and their accompanying family members have not been able to fully enjoy the basic public services of urban residents in areas such as education, employment, medical care, elderly care, and affordable housing. The "marginalized" social status of migrant workers has not changed, and migrant workers have not been able to shed their label as farmers; they are still regarded as "passers-by" in cities. Third, farmers use "hollowed-out" villages as a "sustainable livelihood" to cope with urban exclusion. Due to the gratuitous acquisition of homesteads, their indefinite use, and the absence of retention costs, farmers tend to occupy as much homestead land as possible. At the same time, due to transfer restrictions, migrant workers entering cities cannot realize property rights and interests by transferring homesteads, resulting in long-term vacancy of homesteads. Relevant research shows that about 90% of migrant workers hope to retain their contracted land and homesteads after settling in cities. Migrant workers regard retaining contracted land as their last guarantee and "sustainable livelihood," and regard homesteads as their ultimate place of settlement and dependable real estate. After earning money in cities, they return to their hometowns to build houses, causing villages to exhibit the "reverse expansion phenomenon" of "population decline, area expansion."

To solve the "dual expansion" problem, cities need to take responsibility. Following the approach of coordinating urban and rural development, with solving the problem of "three 100 million people" as the entry point, and adhering to the principle of cities supporting rural areas and industry promoting agriculture, the true purpose of urbanization as "urbanizing" farmers into urban residents must be realized. First, the local government responsibility for citizenization in destination areas must be strengthened, and full coverage of basic urban public services must be promoted. Provincial governments in inflow areas should assume responsibility for equal coverage of public services such as education and medical care for the urban permanent resident population, and municipal governments in inflow areas should assume responsibility for the operation of public facilities and expenditures on local public matters such as affordable housing subsidies, public health, employment services, and social assistance. Megacities and super-large cities should strike a balance between controlling population size and citizenization, converting eligible migrant workers into urban residents as much as possible. Even if citizenization cannot be achieved, corresponding basic public services should be provided using residence permits as a carrier, and a benefit compensation mechanism for outflow-area governments or migrant workers who have long been employed in inflow areas should be gradually established. Second, the household registration system reform must be further deepened. The 2014 "Opinions of the State Council on Further Advancing the Reform of the Household Registration System" was a major step forward in breaking the dual household registration system and weakening the unfairness attached to household registration, but it remains a transitional, tiered reform. Settlement systems introduced by large cities, especially megacities, still favor high-end talent; although the threshold for migrant workers to settle has been tiered, it has in effect been raised. Large cities should adopt a more proactive posture in advancing the citizenization of agricultural migrant populations at different levels, preventing structural contradictions in which large, medium, and small cities correspond to high, medium, and low population quality and income, thereby bringing about new imbalances. Third, land system reform must be accelerated. It is necessary to coordinate urban construction land with rural collective construction land and homesteads, focus on building a unified, open, and competitively orderly construction land market system, and realize equal market entry and equal rights and equal prices for rural collective operating construction land and state-owned land. It is necessary to expand pilot projects linking increases and decreases in urban and rural construction land, expand the scope of coordination, and ensure that the quantity of cultivated land does not decrease, its quality does not decline, and farmers' interests are safeguarded. It is necessary to promote the linkage between construction land indicators and the citizenization of agricultural migrant populations, making newly added construction land indicators and those corresponding to homesteads into assets that can be traded on the market, allowing farmers to enter cities with their assets.

Rural collective construction land being "collectively owned but not contracted," houses being "built without order," and land being "managed without force" are the historical and practical factors behind the formation of the "population decline, area expansion" paradox; it is necessary to scientifically plan village construction, accelerate the improvement of land laws and regulations, and intensify law enforcement supervision.

The irrational layout and disorderly construction of villages have both historical and practical causes. First, the layout of village housing has its natural and historical character. Influenced by traditional modes of production and residential concepts, farming households have long been accustomed to dispersed living in the form of natural courtyards, with houses sited at will and layouts interlaced and chaotic. Before the 1990s, the state had no planning requirements for rural construction, and village construction was in a spontaneous state. Although the state began compiling overall plans for township land use in 1992, influenced by the mindset of valuing cities over villages, investment in rural planning was relatively low and lacked foresight. Homesteads, idle land, and auxiliary land for living and production were mixed with other agricultural land, forming a "starry sky" distribution pattern of villagers' houses. Second, villages exhibit extensive expansion. One type is linear expansion "crawling along roads": wherever roads reach, new houses are built. Satellite imagery from land change surveys shows that most illegal self-built rural land use is distributed along both sides of county and township roads and in urban-rural fringe areas. Another type is block-shaped expansion like "spreading a pancake": new houses continuously extend toward cultivated land on the periphery of villages. Coupled with the lack of effective and timely follow-up governance measures, new houses are built without demolishing old ones, and villages exhibit hollowing and abandonment. Third, "one household, multiple homesteads" and "exceeding prescribed limits" occur frequently. The "Land Administration Law" clearly stipulates that a farmer household may only possess one residence, but in practice, "one household, multiple homesteads" and "exceeding prescribed limits" exist to varying degrees across localities. Data from the Second National Land Survey show that China's rural village land use per capita has reached 240 square meters, exceeding the upper limit of the national standard. Fourth, law enforcement departments exercise "weak management" over rural house building. Rural house building approval involves multiple management departments such as land and resources and urban-rural planning, as well as local township governments. There are many problems in building control management, so that disorderly house building has not received due regulation. Although the "Land Administration Law," "Urban and Rural Planning Law," and "Highway Law" clarify the conditions under which illegal buildings can be demolished, in specific operations, demolition of houses requires submission to court for enforcement. Because disputes involving rural land easily trigger rural petition issues, courts generally do not accept them.

With the accelerated advancement of urbanization, urban growth and village reduction are an inevitable trend. To solve the problem of land "villagization," it is necessary both to rationally plan village layouts and to strengthen land management. First, scientifically plan and guide orderly village construction. According to the overall land use plan, scientifically determine the number, layout, scope, and land use scale of rural residential areas; scientifically determine the regional layout and construction scale of production, living, and service zones; do a good job in village layout planning, village renovation and construction planning, and farmers' centralized residential area planning; and guide orderly village construction and intensive development. Second, accelerate the improvement of land policies and regulations. Since the implementation of the current "Land Administration Law," supporting regulations have made considerable progress, but with the exploratory practice of new urbanization, China's existing laws and regulations can no longer adapt to the development and changes of the situation. At present, China does not yet have a specialized law or regulation specifically regulating rural housing and land. Rural homestead management relies to a large extent on normative documents and local policy adjustments. It is necessary to accelerate legislative work on the reform of collective construction land transfer and land expropriation systems in accordance with the "Land Administration Law," gradually formulate laws and regulations such as the "Land Use Planning Law," "Land Use Control Law," and "Land Supervision Law," and further improve the rural land legal system. It is necessary to revise and improve rural homestead management rules and regulations, improve the land use control system, strictly enforce homestead approval procedures, clarify specific punitive measures for disorderly and over-standard house building and idle land, and provide a basis at the policy and legal level for carrying out land law enforcement. Third, intensify the supervision and management efforts of land law enforcement departments. Strengthen supervision and management means, comprehensively use administrative, legal, and economic channels to manage rural house building, carry out comprehensive rural land improvement, effectively address problems such as "hollow villages" and disorderly house building, and promote efficient and rational use of rural land.

China's family structure is transforming from the traditional pursuit of "four generations under one roof" and "three generations under one roof" toward smaller family size and nuclearized family structure, creating rigid demand for land; it is necessary to conform to changes in family structure and the trend of intergenerational separation, actively improve public service facilities, and vigorously develop elderly care services.

Since reform and opening up, smaller family size has increasingly become an important feature of changes in urban and rural family structure. On the one hand, changes in family structure create rigid demand for construction land. From the changes in and distribution of household population in China, in 1982 the top three shares of total households were households of 5 or more people, 4-person households, and 3-person households. From 1990 to the present, the top three shares of total households have evolved into 3-person households, 2-person households, and 1-person households. This largely indicates that nuclear families, empty-nest families, DINK families, single-person households, and single-parent families are becoming important forms of urban and rural family structure. Because housing is the place where every family settles down and establishes itself, and an important means for human survival, development, and enjoyment, the demand for housing has brought about an expansion in the scale of construction land. On the other hand, the decline in rural population without a decline in households has caused villages to expand in a "deformed" way. In China's rural population changes, the actual resident population is decreasing, but the number of households has not decreased but increased. The current "Land Administration Law" establishes a homestead recovery system, but it does not make corresponding provisions on the specific policy boundaries, recovery procedures, and compensation standards for recovery, resulting in rural homestead use being in a state of incremental supply for a long time, with essentially zero revitalization and utilization of existing stock. In particular, with the "counter-urbanization" that has appeared in recent years and the "heating up" of rural homesteads, the withdrawal of rural homesteads has become even more difficult.

To solve the "dual expansion" problem brought about by changes in family structure, it is necessary to act in accordance with the trend and focus on guidance. First, in cities, resolve the contradiction between supply and demand by promoting the healthy development of the real estate market and the construction of affordable housing. Give full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation, actively guide the real estate market to adjust structure, protect rigid demand, promote improvement, and stabilize growth, so as to meet residents' multi-level market needs; at the same time, according to the trend of smaller family structure, adjust and optimize housing structure and area and promote intensive development. It is necessary to improve the basic housing security system, actively provide public rental housing for migrant workers stably employed in cities and towns, and extend housing security coverage to the broad mass of migrant workers. Second, in rural areas, guidance and management must be strengthened. Because homestead rights confirmation is imminent and construction land indicators are in short supply, homestead approval has been suspended in recent years. However, rural youth face rigid demand brought by marriage and family formation and the "butterfly effect" brought by the homestead boom, leading to problems of unauthorized adjustment of contracted land or private buying and selling and transfer of contracted land along roads and illegal disorderly construction and occupation. In response, guidance must be strengthened, guiding the new generation of migrant workers to buy housing in cities and towns instead of returning to their hometowns to build houses, while strengthening management of rural land and lawful governance of new disorderly construction. Third, vigorously develop urban and rural elderly care services. China has now entered an aging society, but from the perspective of urban-rural population distribution, rural aging is higher than urban aging. According to the classification of the International Labour Organization, when the proportion of the labor force aged 45 and above in a country or region exceeds 15% of the total labor force, it is considered an elderly society. At present, China's agricultural employment personnel aged 50 and above account for 32.5%, far exceeding the international standard, and the aging of the agricultural labor force is a serious problem. It is necessary to vigorously develop elderly care services, carry out pilot projects for reverse mortgage pension insurance on the housing of the elderly, and form a market-based exit mechanism for elderly housing. In particular, great importance must be attached to rural elderly care services, promote pilot projects for the new rural social pension insurance system, gradually establish a system in which the government purchases elderly care services for widowed, poor, and advanced-age elderly people, and explore in due course methods linking homestead transfer with rural elderly care.