It is difficult to complete the urbanization target during the 13th five-year Plan.

The issue of new urbanization is still a hot issue to be involved in the upcoming Fifth Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

The 21st Century Economic report has learned that the Fifth Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee will discuss the proposals of the 13th five-year Plan, in which, in addition to the more important regional gross domestic product (GDP) and service industry, science and technology indicators, how to set urbanization indicators is more critical.

According to the National New urbanization Plan (2014-2020), the urbanization rate of the resident population will reach about 60% in 2020, and the urbanization rate of the registered population will reach about 45%. We will strive to achieve the settlement of about 100 million agricultural transfer population and other permanent residents in cities and towns.

From the perspective of reality, in order to achieve the above two targets, we still need to accelerate the reform of household registration and other aspects. The data show that the total number of migrant workers grew by 2.8 per cent in 2014, down from more than 5 per cent in 2011-2012. At the end of the second quarter of 2015, the total number of migrant workers in rural areas increased by only 0.1%, which means that the total number of migrant workers is likely to grow negatively in the future.

GE Jintian, a professor at Jinan University who is engaged in the new urbanization project, believes that with the return of migrant workers and the reduction in the number of migrant workers, it may be necessary to adjust the statistical caliber of urban population in the future.

The rate of urbanization slows down

With the footsteps of the national 13th five-year Plan getting closer and closer, how to determine the urbanization index of the 13th five-year Plan needs to be studied carefully.

According to the previous National New urbanization Plan (2014-2020), the urbanization rate of the resident population reached about 60% in 2020, the urbanization rate of the registered population reached about 45%, and the gap between the urbanization rate of the registered population and the urbanization rate of the resident population was reduced by about 2 percentage points. we will strive to achieve the settlement of about 100 million agricultural migrants and other permanent residents in cities and towns.

The urbanization rate in 2014 was 54.77%. If the urbanization rate target is to reach 60% in 2020, the urbanization rate should be increased by about 1 percentage point a year in the future.

From the perspective of reality, there is still a long way to go to achieve such a goal. In particular, as China's total labor force begins to decrease year by year, the number of migrant workers is gradually exhausted, and the number of migrant workers going out is declining, which may affect the city-to-town rate in the coming period of time.

Cai Fang, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the improvement of the urbanization rate in the future mainly depends on two groups of people, one is farmers, the vast majority are 40 and over 50 years old, they are no longer transferred; the other part of rural middle school graduates, that is, 16 to 19-year-old junior high school and high school graduates, these people have entered a stage of sustained negative growth since 2015.

"the speed of urbanization itself will slow down (in the future). Second, urbanization and the economy are cause and effect each other. The decline in China's economic growth will lead to a slowdown in urbanization, which will pose a new challenge to China's economy." He said at a forum in August.

Liu Shilin, dean and chief expert of the Institute of Urban Sciences of Shanghai Jiaotong University, is currently doing research on urbanization.

As an expert in the 13th five-year Plan, he found an interesting situation, that is, some students in Jiangsu and Zhejiang still retain a rural hukou because they can participate in the dividends of local collective enterprises. This makes it difficult to achieve the goal of urbanization rate of registered population.

Or the statistical caliber needs to be adjusted.

GE Jintian, a professor at Jinan University who is engaged in the new urbanization project, believes that with the return of migrant workers and the reduction in the number of migrant workers, it may be necessary to adjust the statistical caliber of urban population in the future.

Statistics show that nearly 30% of China's agricultural registered population already live in cities and towns. GE Jintian believes that, "many of these migrant workers buy houses in small towns, mainly engaged in non-agriculture, these people should be regarded as urban population."

In addition, the construction of communities and industrial parks in rural areas has also produced a new type of farmers.

For example, at present, Dezhou, Shandong Province has explored and established a new model of "two areas building together" for the simultaneous construction of a new rural community and a rural economic park, with a total of 378 rural communities built or under construction, and 300000 peasant households. Whether these farmers live at home and work in factories or not is defined as urban population, which needs to be studied.

Niu Fengrui, vice president of the China Society of Urban Economics, believes that at present, the biggest problem in urbanization is that farmers are willing to go to big cities and mega-cities, with employment opportunities and high incomes. However, these areas need residence permits, and the state encourages migrant workers to go to small and medium-sized cities and towns and liberalizes household registration restrictions, but farmers are reluctant to go because of the lack of employment opportunities.

"if more than 20 million of the mega-cities restrict the entry of migrant workers, cities with a population of 5 million to 10 million can still absorb some of the migrant workers." He said.