Migrant workers returning home to start businesses inject new momentum into the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: entrepreneurship is an important way to promote economic and social development and improve people's livelihoods. The history of China's reform and opening up is a history of continuous entrepreneurship and innovation.

In this process, Chinese farmers have always held high the banner of reform, using their own vivid practice to interpret the century-spanning legend of entrepreneurship and innovation, laying a solid foundation for realizing the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Today, under the new normal of economic development, an upsurge of migrant workers returning home to start businesses is quietly rising, and the sparks of entrepreneurship and innovation are lighting up the vast fields. The grassroots power from the local level is becoming a vital new force in the great tide of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation," playing an important role in the new development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers as well as the economy and society.

The Party and the government attach great importance to the creative spirit of farmers and take extra care to protect their entrepreneurial passion. The Opinions on Supporting Migrant Workers and Other Personnel in Returning Home to Start Businesses, issued by the General Office of the State Council, clearly states: "Supporting migrant workers, college students, demobilized soldiers and other personnel in returning home to start businesses, and through mass entrepreneurship and innovation making businesses flourish in vast townships and villages, can promote employment, increase incomes, and open up a new situation of coordinated development of new industrialization and agricultural modernization, urbanization and new rural construction." From the past "peacocks flying southeast" to today's "phoenixes returning to their nests," from finding a job for oneself to creating a batch of jobs for others, from one person creating wealth to organizing and leading a group of people in creating wealth, migrant workers returning home to start businesses, although it is a logical choice and transformation in the migrant workers' own development, has driven close interconnection and deep integration between urban and rural areas and between industry and agriculture in aspects such as the market, capital, information, technology, management, talent and ideas, and is in fact creating a new development legend.

Migrant workers returning home to start businesses has injected fresh vitality into developing modern agriculture and advancing the supply-side structural reform of agriculture. Migrant workers return home with their "first bucket of gold" to start businesses, and many engage in modern agriculture. They either enter from processing and distribution, developing distinctive planting and breeding industries and industries integrating the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, or engage in large-scale agricultural operations. Carrying the market awareness and internet thinking they learned in the cities, they introduce advanced science and technology, production methods, modern business concepts and industrial development models into agriculture, bringing a stream of fresh water to the transformation and upgrading of their hometowns' traditional agriculture. Their return-home entrepreneurship is like stones thrown into a pond, stirring up layer upon layer of splashes while also playing a pioneering and leading role in the extension, expansion and enrichment of the local agricultural industry chain. They are the fresh blood and active factors in practicing the supply-side structural reform of agriculture, improving agriculture's quality, efficiency and competitiveness, and realizing agricultural modernization.

Migrant workers returning home to start businesses has added strong momentum to accelerating the coordinated development of new urbanization and new rural construction. Migrant workers are an important link connecting cities and villages, and developed regions and less developed regions. Returning home to start businesses not only promotes the reverse flow of superior resources from cities to rural areas and from economically developed regions to less developed regions, driving the concentration of factors such as capital, technology and labor in small towns and adding momentum to regional economic development, but also ignites the flame of non-agricultural industries in rural areas in the era of the new economy, supporting the industrial foundation of urbanization in the central and western regions. It can be said that every migrant worker who returns home to start a business is a torch; they have lit the hope of China's new industrialization in the fields and made important contributions to opening up a new situation of coordinated development of new industrialization and agricultural modernization, urbanization and new rural construction.

Migrant workers returning home to start businesses has tapped new potential for promoting the nearby transfer of farmers' employment and cultivating new-type farmers. Migrant workers returning home to start businesses is not only conducive to realizing their own value and improving economic returns, but also, through entrepreneurship driving employment, enables more fellow villagers to find work nearby, earning money while caring for their families. It can both solve the employment problem of part of the rural labor force and advance targeted poverty alleviation, and also ease the awkwardness and helplessness of some migrant workers who "cannot get into the city and cannot return to their hometowns," helping to resolve the problem of the three left-behind groups in rural areas and accelerate poverty alleviation. At the same time, as large numbers of migrant workers return home to start businesses, many of them will grow into new-type professional farmers, agricultural entrepreneurs of the new era, new-style village sages and so on, which will certainly drive the overall improvement of farmers' quality and the improvement of grassroots social governance, and is of great significance to the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers as a whole.

Migrant workers returning home to start businesses has cultivated new momentum for achieving new macroeconomic growth under the new normal. At present, China's economic development is in a shifting period of structural adjustment, and cultivating new drivers of economic growth is very important. China has 270 million migrant workers; they are hardworking and wise, and have experienced the baptism of market thinking and urban civilization. Once they become active, tens of thousands of market cells will surely converge into tremendous momentum for development. Their role lies in agriculture, rural areas and farmers, yet not only there; a small pawn that crosses the river is not exchanged for a chariot. Their passion, stories and experience in entrepreneurship and innovation, and even their own flourishing existence, play an important role in further arousing the public's enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and innovation and continuously tapping the creativity of the grassroots and the masses; in advancing comprehensive deepening of reform and, with the spirit of "ants gnawing at a bone," continuously charging at "hard bones"; and in forming new economic growth points for macroeconomic development and cultivating new sources of momentum.

At present, promoting migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship could not come at a better time. Internally, in recent years, hundreds of millions of migrant workers have accumulated certain resources such as capital, technology and connections, and understand the market economy and urban thinking. In addition, migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship also comes more from the emotional desire to return to their homeland, and they understand rural conditions better, enabling them to advance entrepreneurship in their hometowns more smoothly. Externally, the state has issued a series of preferential policies supporting migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship, and the entrepreneurial environment has been continuously optimized, laying a solid strategic support for migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship; the supply-side structural reform of agriculture and the accelerated advancement of new urbanization have given rise to enormous entrepreneurial demand, bringing huge market opportunities for migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship; led by modern agricultural science and technology and "Internet Plus," the technical and market barriers to entrepreneurship are constantly being broken through, providing good conditions for migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship to advance to a higher level; and, in line with the strategy of industrial gradient transfer from the developed eastern regions, transferring suitable industries to hometowns for renewed entrepreneurship and innovation has built a development platform for migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship to leverage favorable momentum. With both internal and external conditions in place and the east wind just right, they will surely become the backbone of mass entrepreneurship.

However, entrepreneurship is, after all, a matter involving enormous risk, especially entrepreneurship by migrant workers. Therefore, migrant workers returning home to start businesses cannot do without the support, care and guidance of government departments. For migrant workers who are just starting businesses or who have the desire to start businesses, support must be well provided. Local governments must effectively raise their strategic understanding of migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship, change the previous inertial reliance on only valuing "attracting large enterprises and launching large projects," and extend the special policies previously used only to encourage investment attraction to migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship as well. They should focus on strengthening work in areas such as carrying out professional entrepreneurship training, improving public services such as social insurance transfer and continuation, lowering the threshold for return-home entrepreneurship, and improving market intermediary services for return-home entrepreneurship. They should not only "help them onto the horse," but preferably also "accompany them for a stretch of the journey." For entrepreneurs encountering difficulties and obstacles in their businesses, care must be provided. Relevant departments should conduct follow-up investigations and research on the patterns of entrepreneurship, strengthen interaction and exchange with entrepreneurs, promptly understand what they are thinking, what they want, what they urgently need and what they seek, and focus on providing targeted assistance in areas where small and micro entrepreneurs easily encounter difficulties, such as technical guidance, talent training, office space and funding support, doing more to "send charcoal in snowy weather" as timely help. For entrepreneurial projects and entrepreneurs that have already grown and developed, guidance must be well provided. The focus should be on strategic planning and overall coordination, guiding them to strive toward higher levels such as branding. In short, the autonomy of entrepreneurs must be respected, and administrative orders must not be used. It is necessary both to prevent rushing too much and pulling up seedlings to help them grow, and to avoid paying no attention and letting them fend for themselves.

Someone once said that one of the miracles of China's reform is that it linked modernizing market-economy language such as entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs with farmers and migrant workers, who were previously regarded as a backward social group. Over the past 30-plus years, migrant workers have always been an important force supporting China's economic development, and now this force is deeply rooted in even vaster fields. We must firmly seize the development opportunities of the times, combine migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship with "mass entrepreneurship and innovation," with deepening rural reform, and with the synchronized development of the four modernizations, fully mobilize the entrepreneurial and innovative enthusiasm of hundreds of millions of farmers, and write a new chapter for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.