How New-Type Urbanization Promotes Farmers' Income Growth

New-type urbanization reflects the inevitable process of agriculture shifting to the secondary and tertiary industries, farmers becoming urban residents, and rural areas becoming cities. Agriculture turning into secondary and tertiary industries is the adjustment, upgrading and transformation of the industrial structure, which helps raise or improve farmers' income; farmers becoming urban residents reflects the narrowing of the urban-rural income gap and the continuous increase of farmers' income; rural areas becoming cities is centered on the mutual reinforcement of land appreciation and economies of scale, and ultimately also manifests as an increase in farmers' income.

Statistically, farmers' income is divided into four parts, namely household business income, wage income, property income and transfer income. At the beginning of reform and opening up, household business income accounted for the largest share of Chinese farmers' income; as the pace of industrialization and urbanization gradually accelerated after reform and opening up, more and more farmers began to move from villages to towns and from fields to factories, and thus the share of wage income in farmers' household income gradually increased. In 2013, China's per capita net income of farmers was 8896 yuan, of which net household business income was 3793 yuan and wage income was 4025 yuan, surpassing net household business income for the first time and becoming the "largest" share. This shows that urbanization has become the main channel for farmers' income growth.

Since urbanization has become the main channel for farmers' income growth, further promoting farmers' income growth must firmly grasp this leading driver. To this end, it is necessary to coordinate urban and rural development, follow the path of new-type urbanization with Chinese characteristics, and achieve coordinated development and mutual benefit between industry and agriculture and between urban and rural areas.

The author believes that in the process of following the path of new-type urbanization with Chinese characteristics to promote farmers' income growth, it is necessary to grasp four key points: "vacating the cage to change the bird" and eliminating the three major "scissor gaps."

First, grasp the key of synchronizing the four modernizations to achieve "vacating the cage to change the bird." Improving quality and advancing in step with industrialization, informatization and agricultural modernization is the key to new-type urbanization with Chinese characteristics, and this reflects the upgrading of the industrial structure in the development of productive forces. As these four modernizations advance in step, urbanization creates more opportunities for farmers to find employment, as they take up new industrial jobs, information industry jobs and modern agricultural jobs, obtaining returns much higher than those of traditional agriculture. For example, when rural women go to the city to work as maternity nurses, their income is many times higher than at home; agritourism businesses in the suburbs are booming, and their income makes urban workers envious.

Second, grasp the core of putting people first, raise the income of migrant workers, and eliminate the first major "scissor gap." Migrant workers are the greatest feature of new-type urbanization with Chinese characteristics and the most prominent embodiment of putting people first. That China has so far been able to move about 270 million migrant workers from rural areas to cities without the occurrence of a British-style "enclosure of the commons" movement is a miracle in the history of world urbanization. Today, there is a large gap between the wages and benefits of migrant workers and those of urban state-owned employees, and both the market and the government have much to do in this regard. The elimination of the wage and benefit gap for migrant workers mainly depends on the market, while the elimination of the gap for migrant workers in social security and public services mainly depends on government action.

Third, grasp land appreciation as the lifeline and eliminate the second major "scissor gap." The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Party has already issued the policy of "allowing rural collectively operated construction land to be transferred, leased and used as shares, and implementing entry into the market, equal rights and equal prices on par with state-owned land," but the relevant laws have not yet been amended. The current approach is to implement the "three-thirds system," that is, the government, developers and farmers each take one third of the land appreciation in urban land management. Because all three parties contribute to land appreciation, the three-thirds distribution plan embodies win-win cooperation. Of course, for farmers to obtain more land appreciation benefits in urbanization, the best approach is, under the premise of national planning, to increase the autonomy of urbanization so that the benefits of land appreciation are given to farmers to the greatest extent possible. For example, the former China No. 1 Village, Daqiuzhuang, changed from a village to a town; today's China No. 1 Village, Huaxi Village, changed from a village to a town; Shaanxi's No. 1 Village, Dongling Village, changed from a village to an urban community; and Heping Village in Xi'an independently established an industrial park. All of these kept the benefits of land appreciation in farmers' hands to the greatest extent possible.

Fourth, grasp ecological wealth as the new darling and eliminate the third major "scissor gap." One of the features of new-type urbanization with Chinese characteristics is closely following the pace of the new era of ecological civilization and building eco-cities. The price scissor gap in ecological resources is a newly emerged scissor gap between industrial and agricultural products. Advancing from industrial civilization to ecological civilization is a return to nature of human civilization, and originally ecological things such as water, grass, trees and even air have become more valuable. By selling water, selling grass, selling trees and even selling air, farmers could originally become wealthy. However, because of the scissor gap, farmers encounter great obstacles in becoming wealthy this way, and the key to solving the problem is how to reasonably compensate the ecological benefits created by rural areas and farmers. There may be many methods, but a simple, easy-to-implement and comprehensively promotable method is to establish a "standard tree compensation system," that is, establish an annual compensation standard for a standard tree, convert other trees into standard trees, and also convert flowers and grasses into standard trees. The compensation fee is borne at three levels: the central government, local governments and communities, with the proportion depending on the size of the ecological benefits contributed to each of the three levels. The reason lies in the fact that the ecological benefits produced by trees have the characteristics of positive externalities of public goods, and not charging fees will lead to the tragedy of the commons. Establishing a standard tree compensation system is to clarify property rights, and it is operable and promotable. In this way, whether farmers in cities or farmers in deserts, planting trees can provide a livelihood and even make them wealthy, and it can also achieve the basic national policy of protecting the ecological environment.