What exactly is the soul of new urbanization?

From the urban-rural separation in the early days of the founding of the PRC to the urban dominance formed since reform and opening up, and then to the urban-rural integration proposed at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, all sectors of society have been continuously deepening their understanding of the urban-rural relationship. In fact, China mostly calls urbanization "townization," and its main purpose is to highlight the role of small and medium-sized towns in the process of urbanization, because small and medium-sized towns are the main areas carrying the transfer of rural population. From the central government to local governments, new urbanization is being vigorously implemented, encouraging farmers to enter cities, with the aim of making towns more suitable for farmers to live in, allowing more people to share in urban civilization, and promoting the overall improvement of living standards and the happiness index. It can thus be seen that achieving "human urbanization" is the soul of new urbanization and the fundamental essence of urban-rural integration. However, the problems of farmers finding it difficult to enter cities and finding it difficult to remain after entering are very prominent, and the process of de-farmerization is extremely long, making urban-rural integration perplexing.

I. Why farmers find it difficult to enter cities

City W belongs to the junction area of the Pearl River Delta and the Nanling Mountains, and administers two districts, four counties, and two county-level cities. As of the end of 2013, the city's registered population was 4.098 million, of which the agricultural population was 2.868 million, accounting for 69.9% of the city's total population, making it a typical city with a large agricultural population. In 2013, the built-up area of the urban district was 88.3 sq km, and the city's urbanization rate was 48%, 4.3 percentage points lower than the national urbanization rate in the same period (53.7%). It can be seen that the task of transferring rural population to towns in City W is very arduous, and the gap between its urbanization rate and the national level is very obvious. The reasons are mainly the following three aspects:

First, the value of household registration is not high, and its attractiveness is insufficient. According to statistics, from 2012 to 2013, City W showed a net outflow state between in-migrating population and out-migrating population, that is, the number of people registered as entering households was less than the total number registered as outflowing, with 7,348 and 4,054 fewer people respectively. Is the threshold for entering the city too high? City W's points-based household registration method stipulates that reaching 35 points (that is, a junior high school education and one year of working in Qing) is enough to register for household entry, so the entry threshold should be said to be very low. But why does the population "inversion" phenomenon occur? The root is still household registration. The traditional household registration system is the deepest imprint of the planned economic system, a population management method directly linked to land and based on the family as the unit. In essence, it is the product of a control-oriented society, fixing farmers on the land and fixing urban residents in their respective cities. Due to the urban-rural dual structure, in the past, urban household registration had far more benefits than rural household registration, and urban household registration, including that of small towns, was quite attractive to farmers, and "agricultural-to-non-agricultural conversion" became highly sought after. But now, urban household registration is no longer so appealing to the rural population and migrant population, and the benefits attached to it have become increasingly limited. Instead, rural household registration brings many practical benefits such as family planning, contracted land, and homestead land. In addition, with the improvement of the rural social insurance system, the security function attached to rural land, and the increase in land output rates, a series of policies benefiting and strengthening agriculture have been introduced and implemented, rural employment and living conditions have continuously improved, and the attractiveness of rural areas has also increased, so farmers naturally "vote with their feet." Some suburban rural areas such as Community A once changed back and forth between "village" and "residence," producing the phenomenon that farmers were willing to remain farmers rather than become urban residents. In addition, farmers have limited employment skills and mostly engage in low-end, low-wage industries and individual private enterprises in towns. Affected by factors such as economic fluctuations and industrial adjustment, their employment is unstable, their income is not guaranteed, and they cannot bear relatively high housing and commodity prices, creating the phenomenon of "earning in towns, retiring in rural areas." These circumstances show that the incentive factors for household registration urbanization are obviously insufficient, the best period for advancing the citizenization of the rural population at low cost has passed, and household registration segmentation has simultaneously produced an anti-institutional force, causing the system's positive function to fail and becoming an institutional arrangement by which entering-city populations resist citizenization.

Second, urban public services are inadequate, and residents' convenience in life is lacking. According to the plan, by 2020, the area of City W's central urban district should reach 135 sq km, the urban population should account for more than 35% of the city's total, and the gross regional product should account for more than 45% of the city's total. To achieve this goal, the pressure is unprecedented. At present, "urban disease" in City W's central urban district is already very obvious, such as a lack of parking spaces and inconvenient parking; in densely populated places such as stations, commercial complexes, and schools, it is often impossible to find suitable parking spots; the drainage system is not smooth, and every rainy season multiple waterlogging spots appear in the urban district, lasting as long as half an hour, with many streets and residential communities becoming "water parks," forcing vehicles to stall and break down; public transportation is imperfect, with only 180 of the urban district's 700 bus stops having waiting shelters, waiting times are too long, and motorcycle taxi management is chaotic, with arbitrary red-light running that cannot be effectively constrained; environmental pollution in some areas and waters is still relatively serious, affecting the people's health, and so on. Where does residents' sense of happiness come from? It mainly comes from the level of urban public services. If it is inconvenient to get a ride, unaffordable to see a doctor, and buying groceries and going to school all require long detours, and even breathing air and drinking water have become problems, then livability is an empty phrase.

Third, industrial support is insufficient, and job opportunities are few. Industrial development can provide economic support for urbanization and absorb the employed population. A city without industrial support is necessarily a town with a fragile economic foundation and incomplete urban functions, and necessarily lacks self-generating capacity and development momentum. The decline and bankruptcy of Detroit in the United States, and the difficulties faced by some resource-exhausted cities in China, were to a large extent caused by failure to carry out industrial upgrading and replacement. An important reason for City W's lagging urbanization level is insufficient industrial development, which cannot provide enough attractive jobs and makes it difficult to meet the employment needs of the transferred population. After years of development, City W has initially formed an industrial system of cement and ceramics, renewable resource utilization, electric power, metal smelting and rolling, leather and footwear, and pharmaceutical and chemical industries. However, this system is dominated by traditional industries that are low in technological content and resource-based or labor-intensive, with a relatively extensive development mode, high energy consumption, high pollution, and low output, and it lacks modern industrial industries such as high-tech industries and advanced manufacturing. From 2011 to 2013, City W had 27 months of negative growth in industrial investment. During the same period, the proportion of City W's high-tech manufacturing was only about 2.6%, far below the province's 24% level. In 2013, only 3 enterprises in City W were selected among Guangdong Province's top 500 enterprises, and their total annual operating revenue was all below 2 billion yuan, a relatively large gap compared with similar areas. In the first quarter of this year, City W had only 515 large-scale industrial enterprises, 157 fewer than in 2011, ranking 18th in the province by total number. Correspondingly, through a survey of the operations of 159 key industrial enterprises in City W in the first quarter, it was found that the contradiction between difficulty in recruiting workers and high labor costs is very prominent, and labor costs are continuously rising. In addition, college students in City W are also staging the phenomenon of "peacocks flying to the Pearl River Delta." In 2011, 2012, and 2013, the college graduates who returned to City W to register (including non-local students studying in City W and City W-registered students studying elsewhere) numbered 5,350, 5,716, and 5,807, but only 1,268, 1,463, and 1,614 students respectively found employment in City W. In other words, about 80% of students chose to leave City W to strive elsewhere, and of these, 80% flowed to the Pearl River Delta. Talents cultivated locally or born locally cannot remain for local use, let alone a swarm of incoming external talents. Fundamentally speaking, this is very unfavorable to a city's long-term development.

Once the cause has been found, the right remedy must be prescribed. It is necessary to adopt a "therapy" suited to City W's actual conditions, make up for City W's shortcomings in urbanization, and seek breakthroughs first in household registration, public services, industry, and other aspects, so that the core essence of "human urbanization" can be better implemented.

II. How to open up the "green channel" for farmers to enter cities

First, actively promote reform of the household registration system. Judging from the national situation and City W's actual conditions, the focus and difficulty of household registration system reform do not lie in issues such as relaxing constraints on the free movement of population through the household registration system. The point of effort and direction of breakthrough lie in how to weaken the welfare value of household registration itself so that it returns to merely being a necessary means of population registration and management, and how to provide supporting basic benefits such as education, medical care, and social security without making city and county finances "unable to make ends meet." Next, the direction of household registration reform should be to establish a urban-rural unified household registration management system based on lawful stable residence and lawful stable occupation as the basic conditions and registration of household registration at the place of habitual residence as the basic form, and to explore linking residence permits with basic public services. Implement "unified" household registration within the city's built-up area, abolish the distinction between agricultural household registration and non-agricultural household registration, and uniformly implement "City W resident household registration." Fully liberalize restrictions on household registration within each county (city) area and on household registration for "three dependents" personnel in the central urban district. Farmers within county (city) areas may register as urban residents nearby, and there are no additional conditions for the household registration of "three dependents" personnel (spouses, children, elderly). Establish a benefit-balancing mechanism after farmers enter cities, gradually separate farmers' economic identity from social identity, and explore the establishment of a benefit distribution mechanism for farmers to "bring land into the city." After rural residents' household registration is transferred to a town, their original rights and interests in rural areas, such as land contracted management rights, homestead use rights, and collective economic income rights, continue to be retained. When urban construction uses surrounding farmers' land, rural community share cooperative organizations may be permitted to develop by investing land assets as shares and to invest contracted land use rights as shares in enterprises, so that farmers can continue to enjoy subsequent operating returns. Farmers may also convert rural homestead land according to a certain standard in exchange for urban residential land or housing, solving the biggest knot after farmers enter cities -- the housing problem. This measure involves the adjustment of interests between the government of the place from which household registration is moved out and the government of the place to which it is moved in, and requires coordinated overall resolution. In addition, with the acceleration of the Guangzhou-Qingyuan integration process, City W's transportation and locational conditions will further improve, and City W's tendency to take over the transfer of Guangzhou's urban functions will become more obvious, and inevitably a large number of people from Guangzhou will purchase property, settle, and seek education in City W. Starting now, relevant departments should begin studying special household registration policies to prepare in advance for their arrival.

Second, continuously raise the level of public services. According to estimates, for each rural person transferred into the city, City W's finances need to increase basic public service expenditure by 2,304 yuan per year (calculated on the 2013 base). By 2020, the population of the central urban district will reach 1.5 million, that is, an increase of about 700,000 on the existing basis. By then, the city's finances will need to bear 160 million yuan per year (excluding infrastructure). This poses a new topic for City W's next stage of basic public service construction. It is necessary to make good use of the Guangzhou-Qingyuan paired assistance platform, focus on raising the level of basic public services such as medical care, health, education, and culture in the northern region, and through forms such as establishing "sister schools" and carrying out trusteeship cooperation with schools and hospitals in the Pearl River Delta region, raise the level of school operation and medical skills, and strive to narrow the north-south gap and urban-rural gap. It is necessary to increase investment in medical care and health undertakings, change the previous practice of relying mainly on hospitals' self-accumulation for development, push public hospitals to return to their public welfare nature, implement "de-administrativization" reform of municipal-level public hospitals, and ensure the healthy development of hospitals. It is necessary to continue advancing the work of strengthening education, strive to have all counties (cities) and all towns meet the standards within the year, and make City W a truly strong education city. It is necessary to actively develop cultural and sports undertakings, complete the urban district sports park as soon as possible, and equip rural areas with a batch of inclusive sports facilities such as open-air basketball courts and table tennis courts. It is necessary to accelerate the construction of the urban district bus system, optimize and improve the bus network, improve bus facilities, raise the number of standard buses per 10,000 people in the central urban district, realize the parallel operation of slow and fast travel systems, and ensure the coordinated and orderly operation of buses, taxis, and motorcycle taxis.

Third, strengthen the pillar role of industrial support. It is necessary to increase investment promotion efforts, follow the industrial development idea of "large projects leading, supporting enterprises following up, and industrial clusters developing," compare with national industrial policies and City W's industrial development positioning, and strengthen investment promotion along the industrial chain. Around industries such as auto parts, new materials, electronic information, and biomedicine, comprehensively sort out the key regions, key industries, and key links for investment promotion, deeply track and analyze enterprises intending to relocate or expand, strengthen contact and connection with large central state-owned enterprises, advantageous inland enterprises, and well-known private enterprises, and strive to introduce a batch of industrial projects with large investment, strong driving force, and supporting and leading roles, continuously expanding the total industrial volume. Support key backbone enterprises in implementing project upgrading and transformation, accelerate technological innovation, extend industrial chains, and drive enterprise scale expansion and quality and efficiency improvement through brand-based development. Encourage and support small and medium-sized enterprises to take the path of being small but specialized and small but refined, serve as good supporting partners for leading enterprises, and realize seamless docking of industries within the region. It is necessary to develop producer services and consumer services simultaneously. Pay attention to giving play to the comprehensive service functions of producer services such as logistics, finance, information, commerce, and research and development for industry, especially advanced manufacturing, and promote the quality improvement and development of manufacturing. In response to the problem of disconnection between industry, academia, and research, accelerate the development of science and technology services, improve the science and technology service system for small and medium-sized enterprises, focus on strengthening the construction of productivity promotion centers at the city and county levels, and support and cultivate a batch of consulting service-oriented science and technology intermediary institutions. It is necessary to accelerate the planning and construction of the central Guangdong modern logistics industry cluster, with the Yuantan Logistics Park as the core, improve the rapid comprehensive transportation system, actively introduce logistics enterprises, encourage enterprises to use third-party logistics, and explore the development of airport economy with modern logistics as the core. Highlight the development of consumer services such as eco-tourism, catering and accommodation, health and wellness, culture and sports, wholesale and retail, resident services, and community services, and give play to their role in expanding consumption, absorbing employment, enriching the people, and benefiting the people. It is necessary to focus on upgrading the city's commercial formats, accelerate the application of scientific management models, advanced applicable technologies, and modern business formats to transform traditional service industries, vigorously promote e-commerce and chain operations, and promote the upgrading of traditionally advantageous service industries such as catering, tourism, and leisure. City W has already planned and built a modern service industry base in Jiangbei, including creating a provincial vocational education base and a "South China Voice Valley" call industry and financial and insurance back-office service center. At the present stage, it is necessary to accelerate the construction progress of the insurance industrial park, amplify the "catfish effect," and attract more financial and insurance back-office institutions to enter, so as to attract higher-quality industrial personnel for employment. It is necessary to strengthen connection and communication with the provincial education department, promote provincial universities to relocate and enter the provincial vocational education base as soon as possible, find new development space, and amplify the role of universities in promoting local economic and social development. It is expected that by 2020, City W's provincial vocational education base will gather 12 secondary and higher education institutions and nearly 200,000 secondary and tertiary students, and this large talent reserve will also become City W's most core competitiveness. At the same time, with the completion of the Chimelong International Forest Tourism Resort, it is expected to receive 30 million visitors per year, drive employment for 50,000 people, and drive employment in related industries for 200,000 people. City W's platform for transformation and upgrading will be more solid, its industrial system will be more complete, and the environment for attracting, retaining, and enabling talent to succeed will also be more mature.

III. Concluding remarks

It must be recognized that advancing urban-rural integration does not mean eliminating rural areas, but rather better protecting rural areas and giving farmers more choices, so that they can both enter cities and return to their villages. For those who can find employment and settle nearby, it is necessary to actively create conditions for local and nearby urbanization. City W currently has nearly 1 million agricultural transferred people working and living between urban and rural areas in a "migratory bird" and "oscillating" manner, in a "semi-urbanized" state. It urgently needs to guide circumstances accordingly, grasp employment as the core, encourage agricultural transferred people to find employment nearby, and lay the foundation for fully entering towns. It is also necessary to improve the employment environment in counties and towns, strengthen skills training, enhance the employment and entrepreneurial abilities of agricultural transferred people, and fundamentally solve the problems of livelihood and future direction. For those who will still remain in rural areas for a long time, it is necessary to actively improve production and living conditions and promote coordinated progress between urbanization and new rural construction. It is necessary to pay attention to giving play to the role of rural "capable people," encourage some farmers who have become prosperous first to establish specialized cooperatives and mutual financial assistance organizations, strengthen the rural collective economy, find opportunities to strengthen agriculture in the process of urbanization, and lead more people to prosperity. It is worth noting that in implementing the urban-rural integration strategy, comprehensive rural reform must run through the entire process, revitalize resources such as land, labor, and farmers' credit, and open up a way out for rural areas oriented toward the market. Only in this way can they enter the fast lane connecting with towns.