The new type of urbanization should make the countryside prosperous

Zhaoshiliang Town, Hengshan County, Shaanxi Province, a village called Tuoxiang Village, covers an area of nearly 2 square kilometers and used to live in more than 30 households and more than 200 villagers. Now people go to the village empty, more than 500 mu of arable land is barren, leaving only Wang Minghou and Gao Shenghua old couple in their 50s waiting here, extensively planting more than 50 mu of land.

In Jinshi Township, Da County, Sichuan Province, a village called Liushe Tongziyuan, the young and middle-aged people went out one after another to find a new life, and the old people left behind were wasted by time one by one. In a mountain village of more than 140 people, Tang Mingxiao and his wife Li Shifen, who are only in their 70s, still live here, accompanying several courtyards that are collapsing every year.

Such a village is no longer an isolated case. As the son of a farmer, I am deeply aware of what land means to me and my family. More than 200 million farmers live in villages large and small across the country, and the average amount of land occupied by each peasant household is only 80 to 60 percent of that in developed countries. The folks have lived on bits and pieces of land for generations and have been facing the loess for generations to rely on heaven for food. In the end, they still did not choose the land under their feet as a place to settle down. The land that flowed through their tears and sweat failed to give them the happiness and serenity they wanted.

My experience of living in the countryside shows that poverty has always been the background of these abandoned and routed villages. Generally speaking, poor families in rural areas have the following types of situations: childless and five-guarantee households in the elderly; serious illness, serious illness, disability and loss of labor capacity; taking care of the seriously ill, underage children and the elderly, unable to go out to work; children going to middle school and university are a drag on family poverty; the death, divorce and disappearance of major labor force lead to poverty. Because of this, the excellent peasant children rushed to Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Beijing without any nostalgia. I have learned that there are more than 400,000 migrant workers in Daxian County, Sichuan Province, equivalent to 1/3 of the county's population.

According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on January 20 this year, there are 749 million permanent residents in cities and towns, accounting for 54.77 percent of the total population. This is the urbanization rate in the digital sense. A similar increase in urbanization rate took 120 years in Britain, 100 years in France, 40 years in the United States, and only 25 years in China. It has the largest urbanization scale in the world and the fastest urbanization speed in the world, which is undoubtedly an arduous wisdom test for the big country governance that is being promoted.

What is worth detailed analysis is that among the urban resident population announced by the National Bureau of Statistics, there are 298 million rural people who have left the registered permanent residence for more than half a year, accounting for 39.78%. They work and live in large and small cities, and although they do not get the citizenship of their cities, nor do they enjoy the treatment of citizens in the areas of education, health care, housing, social security and infrastructure, they just do not want to return to the countryside. I don't want to live in that place called home. This is what I have been worried about all these years. The countryside is empty and the city is full, which affects the nuances of deepening the reform in an all-round way.

Over the years, I have been urging that the real meaning of urbanization is to create opportunities for farmers to increase their income and to let rural settlements prosper. In this process, we must avoid the damage to farmers, the decline of agriculture and the decline of rural areas. Therefore, I suggest that in the top-level design of comprehensively deepening reform, we should adopt the strategy of local urbanization and nearby urbanization, so that farmers can enjoy the same quality of life and public services as citizens at home. We will work out a new way of modernization of farmers' life, industrialization of agricultural production and rural ecology, realize the common progress of urban and rural areas, and enhance the ability of sustainable development of the whole country.

There is an opinion that in the process of promoting a new type of urbanization, a certain number of migrant workers should be settled in cities every year, even at an average scale of 20 million per year. It is believed that in this way, the 400 million migrant workers who have already entered the city and are about to enter the city can be basically digested by 2030. At present, the average cost of citizenization of migrant workers is about 100000 yuan. If we follow this proposal, we need to invest 2 trillion yuan to solve the problem of citizenization of 20 million migrant workers every year. I think it is necessary to comprehensively evaluate such opinions. Only by truly understanding the grand strategy of new urbanization, taking advantage of the situation and making good use of it, can we have a sound and solid start to building a well-off society in an all-round way.

A mayor once told me that according to the existing financial capacity of his city, it is barely affordable for the city's urban and rural residents to enjoy basic public services and achieve an all-round well-off level. However, if more than 1.5 million migrant workers are added, he will not do anything at all, because it is beyond the actual bearing capacity of a city. I have seriously discussed with this mayor whether reverse urbanization can be used as an option for a new type of urbanization, or even as a more advanced stage of development beyond the old type of urbanization. The typical feature of this process is that the urban population actively flows to the countryside in order to escape the pressure of survival and life such as traffic congestion and serious pollution, and enjoys the quality of life of the city with farmers in the countryside, where they can see the mountains and water. Remember homesickness, rural life is prosperous again.

I once reported that agriculture, as a strategic industry on the foundation of the country, needs at least 200 million workers under the age of 45. Otherwise, who will farm and breed? What are the rice bowls of 1.367 billion Chinese people? My further research shows that among the 9.6 million square kilometers of land space in the country, the land space suitable for urbanization development is about 1.8 million square kilometers, excluding the cultivated land that must be protected and the existing construction space. In the future, only 280000 square kilometers of land space can be used for new-type urbanization development, accounting for about 3% of the total land space. Where does the land come from? Where are people going? In view of the basic national conditions of the scarcity of land resources, I think it is difficult to concentrate more than 70% of the population in cities at or above the prefectural level as in some developed countries. In this important judgment, I suggest more mutual respect, less self-justice, more mutual tolerance and less prejudice and misunderstanding.

The village is the root of Chinese agricultural civilization that has lasted for more than 7,000 years since Fuxi and Shennong. In this sense, only by understanding farmers can we understand China, and villages are a strong microcosm of national governance. All the theoretical self-confidence, institutional self-confidence, road self-confidence and cultural self-confidence are derived from the great historical narrative.

When the national governance turns a new page, 588000 administrative villages and more than 2.5 million natural villages are walking at a turning point. In my opinion, the three basic relationships between the state and rural areas, market and rural areas, urban and rural areas need to be rearranged. There are labor pains, confusion and hope in this arrangement.