It is not appropriate to continue to accelerate urbanization.

Editor's note: 37 years later, the Central Urban work Conference was held again, indicating that China's urban construction has entered a new stage, and "urbanization" has become the focus of public attention. At present, the urbanization rate of China's resident population is close to 55%, which means that China's urban construction is in the stage of rapid development. Recently, the China Urban Planning Network interviewed Professor Zhou Yixing, a consultant of the China Urban Planning Association, on the development of urbanization. Mr. Zhou has been engaged in academic research in the field of urbanization for a long time. On September 29, 2005, during the 25th collective study of the political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, he was invited to explain "the development model of foreign urbanization and the road of urbanization with Chinese characteristics".

People's consensus: urbanization is a "process"

Reporter: in recent years, the central government has attached great importance to the relevant work of urbanization. China's urbanization is in a critical period of in-depth development. what do you think is the essential meaning of urbanization?

Zhou Yixing: the essential meaning of urbanization is that after mankind entered the industrial society, the social and economic development began the process of gradually decreasing the proportion of agricultural activities and increasing the proportion of non-agricultural activities. In line with the changes in the economic structure, there has been a process in which the proportion of rural population gradually decreases and the proportion of urban population increases steadily. The process of gradually transforming or strengthening the material appearance of the residential area and people's way of life to the urban character. Although different disciplines have different priorities in understanding this complex phenomenon, it is a consensus that urbanization is a "process".

Reporter: can this process be understood as migrant workers going to the city?

Monday: in the process of urbanization, the proportion of urban population has increased, and the rural population has been transformed into urban population. But there are two forms of this transformation: migration transformation and local transformation. The basic driving force of migration and transformation is the existence of the income gap between urban and rural areas, which leads to the flow of population from rural areas to cities and towns; the mechanism of local transformation is the new rural construction, small town construction and urban development, and the urban transformation and integration of the original villages.

Urbanization is a process of both physical and spiritual changes.

Reporter: at present, many people think that urbanization is urban expansion or the construction of new areas. what do you think of this?

Zhou Yixing: do not simply understand the problem of urbanization as an issue of urban development or urban construction. first of all, it is a problem of economic restructuring and the transformation of the mode of economic growth, as well as solving the problems of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", building small towns and building a new countryside. It is the problem of solving the dual system between urban and rural areas and narrowing the differences between urban and rural areas. It includes not only the physical change process that people can see, but also the more abstract spiritual level change process, such as culture, life style, values and so on.

There are rules to follow in the process of urbanization, but it cannot be absolute.

Reporter: the core of urbanization is the urbanization of people, so is there any regularity in the process of increasing the proportion of urban population that you just mentioned?

Monday Star: yes. Kingsley Davis1972, an American scholar, put forward: "the urbanization process of a country or region generally follows the logistic curve." In 1975, Ray M.Northam first drew the logistic curve of urbanization, which was divided into three stages: the early stage, the middle stage and the later stage, which is the S-shaped curve of the urbanization process.

Of course, the curve is only schematic. When I first introduced the S-shaped curve of urbanization to China in 1982, I slightly modified it to suit the general situation.

However, there are two misunderstandings in reality: one is to regard 30% and 70% as the inflection point of the three stages and be absolute. It seems that urbanization will automatically accelerate as soon as the level of urbanization reaches 30% and slow down as soon as it reaches 70%. In fact, there are no specified characteristic points, and the development stage of urbanization should be judged by the actual changes in the mechanism and process. Second, the S-shaped curve describing the macro situation is arbitrarily applied to a very small regional space, even the city and county. For an urban area that has basically realized urbanization, it does not matter that the proportion of urban population has increased by a few percentage points. To improve the level of urbanization, we should pay more attention to the quality of urbanization and should be measured by various indicators of urban modernization.

The process of urbanization is subject to the suction of cities and towns and the thrust of villages.

Reporter: can you explain the S-shaped curve of urbanization in more detail?

Zhou Yixing: I explained the "three-stage theory" of the S-shaped curve of urbanization with the theory of push and suction in my early years.

The process of population transfer from rural areas to cities and towns is controlled by two basic forces, one is the suction of cities and towns, the other is the thrust of rural areas. Cities and towns are attractive to the rural labor force because of the labor force needed by industrial construction and the corresponding development of the tertiary industry. The material and spiritual advantages of cities in employment, income, cultural life and social status also have a strong temptation to the rural population, which refers to urban suction. The thrust of the countryside comes from the growth of the rural population, which reduces the absolute amount of farmland available per capita. With the progress of agricultural science and technology, especially the socialization of agricultural machinery and agricultural services, agricultural labor productivity has been improved, resulting in the surplus of agricultural labor force. We need to find a way out from the urban non-agricultural sector. The magnitude of suction and thrust depends on the population growth in urban and rural areas, the scale of investment used to expand reproduction, the rate of economic growth and the level of scientific and technological development. The mutual growth and decline of suction and thrust make the urbanization process in stages.

In the early stage, urban suction and rural thrust are released slowly because the contradiction between people and land is not acute, the shortage of funds and the backward level of technology. Therefore, it will take a long time for the urban population to rise from a few percent or a dozen to more than twenty or thirty. With the gradual establishment of the foundation for industrialization, the country's economic strength has increased significantly, the scale and speed of various construction projects have obviously exceeded the previous stage, and agricultural labor productivity has also greatly increased. At this time, both urban suction and rural thrust have increased at the same time. Entering the middle stage of rapid development of urbanization, it is possible that within a relatively short period of time, the level of urbanization will soon exceed 50% from 20 to 30 per cent, and reach 60 to 70 per cent. After the reduction of the relative number and the absolute number of the rural population, the actual scale of the agricultural labor force has become small. In order to maintain the necessary scale of agricultural production, the rural surplus labor force tends to decrease and needs to be relatively stable in a certain proportion. The rural thrust is gradually weakened or even may basically disappear.

As for cities and towns, due to the improvement of science and technology and the level of operation and management, the development of social production no longer mainly depends on the increase of living labor, but on the increase of materialized labor. A large number of surplus labor force in urban industry is adjusted within the city to move towards the tertiary industry, and the urban suction is also gradually weakened. The proportion of urban population is bound to enter a period of slow growth or even relative stagnation.

Urbanization can't be accelerated all the time.

Reporter: do you think China's urbanization will continue to accelerate in the future?

Zhou Yixing: in 2005, my student and colleague, Dr. Chen Yanguang, revised and improved the Northam curve. A four-stage model corresponding to the Northam three-stage model is obtained, that is, the initial stage, the medium-term acceleration stage, the medium-term deceleration stage and the late stage.

If it is specific to a country or region, it can be translated into the following statement: (1) the medium-term stage of urbanization actually includes two small stages: medium-term acceleration and medium-term deceleration; (2) when the level of urbanization reaches half of the saturation value, the speed of urbanization is the fastest, and then it will normally slow down. (3) knowing the urbanization level when the urbanization speed is the fastest, we can roughly infer the saturation value of urbanization.

To improve the level of urbanization, the ideological trend of "New Great Leap forward" should be put an end to.

Reporter: can China's current and future urbanization get some enlightenment from the above theoretical analysis?

Monday: I judge that in the mid-1980s, when the level of urbanization in China reached about 25%, it entered the middle stage. The speed is getting faster and faster from now on. During a period of time after 2000, when the rate of urbanization in China increased by 1.3% to 1.4% a year, it has reached the highest speed. At this time, the corresponding level of urbanization in China is about 40%. According to the data bulletin of the sixth census in 2010, the population of Chinese mainland living in cities and towns was 665.57 million, accounting for 49.68% of the total population.

If my judgment is right, the rate of urbanization in our country in the future will only tend to slow down on the fast tone, but will no longer tend to speed up.

The strategic focus should be shifted to "paying attention to the quality of urbanization".

Reporter: if urbanization enters a deceleration stage, what do you think is the focus of urbanization in the next stage?

Zhou Yixing: I think that today, when the level of urbanization in China is more than 50%, while urbanization continues to be a national key development strategy, the strategic focus should be shifted to "paying attention to the quality of urbanization." We must establish a concept that the higher the level of urbanization, the better, and the faster the speed of urbanization, the better. The high level and high speed of urbanization is a double-edged sword, which not only has advantages, but also brings a lot of problems that cannot be solved.

To improve the quality of urbanization in China, we can start from two aspects:

In cities, we should focus on solving the settlement problem of migrant workers. Strive to lower the threshold for urban farmers to settle in the city, so that they can have warm nuclear families in the city, can also enjoy urban medical care, children's education and other public services, fully integrate into the mainstream society of the city, and let the farmers in the city become real citizens. Therefore, it embodies the humanistic spirit of socialist fairness.

In the countryside, it is necessary to take advantage of the fact that the rural population has been absolutely reduced under the tide of urbanization to carry out the in-depth development of modern agriculture (with new industrialization, can there be a new type of agriculturalization?) To cultivate the market system of agricultural industrialization and make farmers rich as soon as possible. We will increase investment in rural infrastructure and public facilities, vigorously develop rural education, build a new socialist countryside, and focus on the development of small towns. Gradually narrow the gap between urban and rural areas in the level of income, knowledge and civilization, so that rural residents can also enjoy the fun of the era of urbanization.