If the employment of farmers who move to cities is not properly resolved, urbanization is empty talk.
Urbanization does not mean abandoning agriculture. In fact, agriculture can also enter the modern industrial chain and be required to meet certain technical standards.
With urban populations concentrated, people must receive training in modern civilization.
If we do not create an employment system for farmers and do not train them in skills that enable them to adapt to employment tasks, urbanization is empty talk.
The opposite of new urbanization is old urbanization, but where did the problems of old urbanization lie? Perhaps they lay in the fact that people previously understood urbanization rather narrowly, assuming that urbanization meant building houses, developing land, and moving farmers into apartments. But after farmers moved into apartments, were the related problems solved? They were not.
How should people-centered new urbanization be measured?
The reason new urbanization is new is that it highlights people as the core. People-centered urbanization covers a very broad range of content. In my view, the most important aspects are four: the major changes in the mode of production, lifestyle, level of civilized quality and social rights and interests of the people who are the subjects of urbanization. These four aspects are the process by which people enter the modern civilized system.
For us, from the perspective of the mode of production, the urbanization of people is of great significance. China is undergoing the largest-scale urbanization process in world history. What people face is not only a change in the way they live, but more importantly a change in the systems and mechanisms by which production operates, that is, a change in industrial forms. I have always believed that urbanization does not mean abandoning agriculture. In fact, agriculture can also enter the modern industrial chain and be required to meet certain technical standards. In addition to farmers and migrant workers entering urban industry and services and completing the form of becoming urban residents, farmers can also urbanize in place and learn and accept modern industrial operating methods. This is also an important form of urbanization, namely aligning workers with modern industrial operating methods.
The urbanization of people is manifested in the transformation of lifestyle and refers to the process by which rural residents enter and integrate into the modern civilized lifestyle. Recently some local governments have simply proposed abolishing the household registration system to solve the problem, but I believe the transformation of lifestyle is not a change in the name of household registration, but a real transformation in every aspect of the specific content of life. For this reason, it is necessary to establish a system of indicators for urban lifestyles to measure it. For example, Huaxi Village and Gaobeidian, although nominally under rural household registration, have already achieved a modern lifestyle transformation. Therefore, a modern lifestyle is a core element.
Urban and city life also requires every person to have a relatively high level of public awareness and civic quality. The urbanization of people also means that every person participating in urbanization possesses civilized quality. With urban populations concentrated, people must receive training in modern civilization. Our traditional rural areas and quite a few places do indeed lack such training. In towns and cities, especially large cities, if public order and public health norms are not observed, the multiplier effect of dense and massive populations will cause enormous disasters.
Our nation has had a division between town and country since ancient times. In ancient times, city dwellers were called guoren and rural dwellers were called yeren. At that time China was the country that built the most city walls in the world. Building walls was meant to separate the inside of the city from the outside. So the division between town and country in our country was not formed today; it has long-term historical causes. In the dual system of town-country division and urban-rural separation, the prominent problem is unfairness and injustice in rights and interests. For this reason, urbanization requires establishing and improving a complete set of institutions, systems and mechanisms including fairness in rights, fairness in opportunities and fairness in rules.
In fact, urbanization and becoming urban residents are a tremendous progress in Chinese history. If one day it truly becomes possible for the vast majority of the population to become urban residents, this becoming urban residents, in addition to referring to changes in the mode of production, lifestyle and civilized quality, should more importantly mean enabling the vast majority of the population to enjoy the same public welfare and social security as urban residents. The significance will be extremely great, and of course the difficulty and pressure will also be very great.
The places around the world that do relatively well in social welfare and security are often regions with smaller populations, such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, most of which are countries with populations of several million. By contrast, China's full coverage of social security and old-age pensions targets a population size of 1.37 billion, so the pressure is imaginable.
Four core tasks for advancing the process of becoming urban residents
Recently we conducted a nationwide sample survey, first on whether migrant workers are willing to return to rural areas. The survey showed that more than 70% of migrant workers do not plan to return to their hometowns for employment, and 80% of migrant workers are unwilling to choose to work in rural areas. The older generation is somewhat better, while the younger they are, the less willing they are to return to their hometowns to farm. Only 3.8% of migrant workers born in the 1990s said they could or would be willing to return to their villages to farm.
Second was the question of where farmers are willing to choose to settle during the process of becoming urban residents. The results found that 80% of migrant workers are willing to choose to settle in county-level or above cities, while among the rural household-registered population nationwide, more than 20% have already purchased housing in cities at various levels. Farmers want to enter cities for two purposes: one is for their children to attend school, and the other is for the elderly to seek medical care. Good schools and good hospitals are all in county-level or above cities, in cities of a certain scale with relatively high intensity and integration.
It can be seen that in future Chinese urbanization and city construction, highlighting the development of county seats and county-level or above cities is reasonable. When populations gather to a certain scale, employment opportunities multiply, and larger cities have stronger competitiveness.
To advance the process of becoming urban residents and urbanization, cities need to advance various tasks in four aspects: employment, household registration, children's education and security.
If we do not create an employment system for farmers and do not train them in skills that enable them to adapt to employment tasks, urbanization is empty talk. Employment is the core of urbanization. Our sample surveys on urbanization also prove that all places that have done well have created new industrial chains. Therefore, cities need to do two things well: first, provide new industrial opportunities; second, provide good employment training for migrant workers.
According to the principle of classified guidance, advancing household registration system reform by level and by stage is most difficult in mega-cities. At present, fully opening household registration policy in mega-cities is still not very realistic. Based on actual conditions, moderately lowering household registration thresholds and admission conditions should be tried in various types of cities. For the vast majority of large and medium-sized cities, further experiments should be conducted on how to lower admission conditions, encouraging and absorbing more qualified migrant workers to settle in cities. Small cities should fully open up, taking the lead in achieving free population flow within municipal and provincial boundaries, and then gradually advancing cross-provincial flow.
Recently, the State Council document on supporting the urbanization of the agricultural transfer population proposed incorporating the compulsory education of children accompanying migrant workers into the scope of public financial security. It also proposed gradually improving and implementing policies for tuition and miscellaneous fee exemptions in secondary vocational education and for inclusive preschool education. These policies will play a positive role in solving the education problem of migrant workers' children.
Achieving security coverage for the permanent resident population, including both household-registered population and floating population, will be a huge challenge for cities. In terms of social security, at the current stage priority should be given to advancing social security coordination within provincial boundaries. Jiangsu, Guangdong and other places have already carried out experiments in intra-provincial coordination, and their experience is worth learning from. On this basis, gradually formulate and improve nationwide measures for cross-provincial transfer and continuation of social security. Cross-provincial experiments in social security transfer payments can be carried out in major provinces that send out migrant workers and major provinces that receive them, and then gradually promoted nationwide.
In addition, the greatest resource for farmers is still land, including homestead land and cultivated land. At present, some places have conducted experiments in land circulation and asset mortgages. Handling the land issue well is conducive to China's rural reform and is highly beneficial for advancing new urbanization and the process of becoming urban residents.