The necessary stage of China's Rural Economic and Social Development and Transformation

Profound changes are taking place in China's rural areas. The phenomena of "hollowing out of villages" and "aging of farmers" have appeared in the rural areas of many places. This is a necessary stage for the industrialization and urbanization of traditional agricultural countries to advance to a certain extent. How to deal with these problems is a new challenge to the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers in China.

It is the key for farmers to go to cities for employment.

At present, hundreds of millions of rural workers in China go to cities to work and live, but they are still on the edge of urban management. According to statistics, in 2006, the urbanization rate was 43.9%, the urban population has reached 577 million, and the corresponding rural population has dropped to 56.1%, 737 million. However, according to household registration statistics, the agricultural hukou is about 949 million people. That is to say, about 212 million people with agricultural household registration do not live in the place where they are registered.

Some people think that "migrant workers" should be changed to "farmers who work in cities" to eliminate discrimination. But in fact, not all farmers have to go to the city to work, and many people are employed below the county level. For example, there are 140 million employees in township enterprises. Therefore, it is not enough to protect the rights and interests of farmers who work in cities, but also to protect the rights and interests of migrant workers who work outside the city.

The pattern of the flow of migrant workers in the future depends on how China takes the road of urbanization. This has always been controversial in the theoretical circle. There are very few countries in the world that can really be compared with China's national conditions, and the United States mainly relies on its coastal areas to solve its problems, but the population of the United States has just exceeded 300 million, which is 1 billion less than that of China. Recently, more and more people talk about the experience of South Korea, but there are only more than 40 million people in South Korea. Seoul alone accounts for nearly half of the country's population. Of course, the experience of other countries should be used for reference, but in terms of population size, this is not a problem of the same order of magnitude. It should be noted that China's urbanization will be a long process, and there will be a large number of people living in rural areas for a long time. In recent years, the process of urbanization in China has been relatively fast, with an annual increase of 1.3%. If it is increased by 1 percentage point in the next year, the urbanization rate will reach about 55% by the time the overall well-off society is built. By 2050, when modernization is basically achieved, the urbanization rate may increase to 60% or even 70%. But even so, at least 30% of China's population will be in rural areas. Therefore, the proposal of the CPC Central Committee on the 10th five-year Plan in 2000 put forward that it is necessary to walk out of a urbanization road of "combining large, small, medium and small cities with small towns".

When farmers go to cities, they must solve three major problems: housing, employment and social security. If half of the 250 million farmers go to the city, it will be 125 million; if the average household is 50 square meters, 6.25 billion square meters of houses will be built, which is equivalent to 10.3 times the sales area of commercial housing nationwide in 2006.

The fundamental problem for farmers to go to the city is employment. Some places have proposed "exchanging land for social security". In my opinion, this issue should be cautious. People can not live on the minimum standard of living alone, first of all, they have to get a job. Therefore, in the process of accelerating urbanization, we must have a clear grasp of two points: first, promoting urbanization and building a new countryside must go hand in hand, and we cannot expect to solve another problem completely by solving another problem; second, it is by no means a simple matter for farmers to go to cities, and only when they have the ability to solve farmers' employment, housing and various social security can they boldly move forward.

Improving the degree of farmers' organization is more important than scale operation.

In a sense, the high degree of organization of Chinese farmers is rare in the world, and everyone belongs to a village committee. However, in most areas, the villagers' committee is still an introverted organization engaged in social management, and there are not many village collective organizations with real economic strength, but under the condition of market economy, what farmers need more urgently is an extroverted and operational organization.

On the issue of improving the degree of organization of farmers, all localities should proceed from reality. Where there are conditions, such as southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and other areas with relatively strong rural collective economic strength, we can rely on the existing trinity organizations-- both party branches and village committees. Or farmers' collective economic organizations-- to solve the problem of improving the degree of organization of farmers and improving social services. For most areas, the collective economy does not have much strength, so it is necessary to guide farmers to organize themselves, take the road of developing cooperative organizations, and provide self-service with the support of the government and relying on farmers' professional cooperative organizations.

In this regard, the international experience is worth learning. For example, German agriculture has the so-called "agricultural machinery ring" or "agricultural machinery circle". That is to say, as the operation scale and funds of each household are limited, in order to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of agricultural machinery, cooperative organizations uniformly coordinate farmers' purchase of agricultural machinery, and several households and more than a dozen farmers form a "agricultural machinery ring." In contrast, when facing new problems, some grass-roots cadres in China are often unwilling to make efforts to improve the degree of organization of farmers and improve social services, but simply want to centralize the contracted land of farmers and carry out the so-called large-scale operation. This may seem simple, but if urbanization is not enough to absorb so many farmers, there will be endless troubles.

The continuous bumper harvest of wheat in China in recent years, in addition to the great contribution of improved varieties, another important reason is that tens of thousands of harvesters provide harvesting services to farmers from south to north. Without this condition, it would be difficult for a bumper harvest of wheat to be harvested when both young and strong workers go out to work. This is the importance of agricultural socialization service. Therefore, we must be down-to-earth, painstaking and meticulous to improve the degree of organization of farmers and enhance agricultural socialized services, in order to solve many problems faced by agricultural development.

Rural economic and social transformation

After the abolition of agricultural tax, the rural grassroots are facing many new problems.

One is the problem of rural governance system. Over the past 30 years, the biggest evolution of the rural system is to gradually expand farmers' autonomy. Therefore, farmers' economic dependence on traditional rural organizations is significantly reduced. If we still rely on the original method to manage the countryside and farmers, we will certainly not be able to adapt. Therefore, rural governance needs to be explored from system design to concrete operation. China has formulated a lot of laws and policies in rural governance, but some provisions have their own contradictions and loopholes, which need to be constantly improved in practice. For example, a farmer is allowed to go out for employment or even for his family to move out, but his property, including land, housing, and collective property accumulated for a long time, is difficult to realize. As soon as he moves out, he has nothing. For another example, according to the survey, 91% of the land ownership in China's rural areas is owned by villagers' groups, but the organizations at this level that own land ownership do not have independent legal status. The villagers' committee is a legal autonomous organization, but most of the village committees have no land ownership. It is not a long-term solution to give the right to contract out the land and the management of collective property to the village committee, so that the organizations without ownership manage the property, while the organizations with ownership are left empty.

The second is the governance cost of rural autonomous organizations. According to the Constitution, the village committee is an autonomous organization. Village committees have to raise funds on their own, from personnel salaries and management expenses to public welfare undertakings and infrastructure construction. After the abolition of agricultural tax, places with good collective economy do not have to rely on farmers to raise money, but can be collectively paid by the village; but areas with underdeveloped collective economy need to collect money from farmers to do things. This gives rise to a big question: who should bear the operating costs of rural autonomous organizations?

The third is the function of township government and the allocation of public resources. With the deepening of the reform of rural governance structure, how to determine the functions of township government? The 15th CPC National Congress put forward that government functions are four major events-- economic regulation, market supervision, social management, and public services. These four sentences may not be appropriate for township-level governments, for example, villages and towns cannot have the function of economic regulation and control. Some people propose that township-level governments are mainly social management and public services, but others think that villages and towns must pay attention to the economy and attract investment. The crux of the question is, what is the function of the township government? In practice, I am afraid we cannot adopt an across-the-board approach. At present, there are great differences between villages and towns all over the country, and the economic scale and financial revenue of a township in developed areas may exceed that of a county and city in traditional agricultural areas. The reform of township institutions must proceed from reality.

Therefore, through urbanization, we can turn farmers into citizens, improve the degree of organization of farmers, provide farmers with high-quality agricultural socialization services and gradually improve the rural governance structure, and provide farmers with more and better social management and public services. is a top priority. We must adapt to the profound changes that are taking place in the rural economy and society, and pay more attention to studying and solving these problems than ever before, so as to alleviate the shock in the period of rural economic and social transformation as far as possible.