Rural modernization is more important than peasants entering cities

The State Council issued the State Council's opinions on further promoting the Reform of the Household Registration system, formally proposing that China will establish a unified hukou registration system in urban and rural areas to eliminate the distinction between the nature of agricultural hukou and non-agricultural hukou.

The urban-rural dual household registration system has caused great injustice and has been criticized for a long time. Abolishing the difference between agricultural hukou and non-agricultural hukou is a major breakthrough in the reform of China's household registration system. The realization of the same right between urban and rural areas is actually a change in decades. In fact, at the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the Central Committee put forward a 16-character policy on the urbanization strategy, that is, "promoting agriculture by industry, leading villages by cities, mutual benefit between workers and farmers, and the integration of urban and rural areas." At present, the integration of urban and rural areas has been realized in terms of system.

However, the rural hukou has been abolished, but the countryside is still there. In reality, there is still a huge gap between urban and rural areas.

Although the rural household registration will be abolished, at the same time, more rural people will go to the cities. However, people who once lived in rural areas still account for the vast majority of China's population. As a result, the role of China's countryside can not be measured only in terms of economic function. For a large agricultural country like China, rural areas are to the vast majority of the population, just as Ye Yijian, a well-known scholar, said in his book "China in nostalgia". The countryside is the spiritual home that people can't give up. At the same time, the existence of the countryside is also the necessity of the diversification of the way of human existence. The harmonious coexistence of the countryside and nature can give the city a lot of enlightenment.

However, urbanization, which is highly expected, is also based on the elimination of rural areas and the construction of cities. To measure the development level of a land side, how many farmers are transferred to the city is often regarded as an important indicator. The entry of capital, especially real estate capital, has changed the original way of life in the countryside. The forced integration of rural areas into the industrialization system has caused more and more repercussions, and the increasingly fierce conflict in land expropriation and demolition is a warning.

At present, there are eight major contradictions in China's rural areas:

First, the prices of agricultural products have not been liberalized, and the intuitive feeling is that farming does not make money. The response in the future should be to increase subsidies to allow people to make money, rather than letting people charge to hold up food prices, and the state makes sacrifices rather than farmers.

Second, agricultural production subsidies are not in place. When I went back to my hometown to visit my relatives, I found that per capita, the subsidy for a farmer is only about 100 yuan a year. The standard of this subsidy is too low in an inflationary environment. The countermeasure is to raise the subsidy standard in the future.

Third, agriculture is not modernized, nor is it included in the modern industrial system. When Taiwan became the "four Little Dragons of Asia" in the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of food industries such as unification and Dingxin led to the development of agriculture, bringing agriculture into the modern industrial system. The slogan at the beginning of unified business is "Jiahui place". The countermeasure is to realize agricultural modernization and bring agriculture into the modern industrial system. We can learn from Taiwan's agricultural development model to create a large number of agricultural and sideline product bases, food industry bases and tourism industry bases.

Fourth, the infrastructure in rural areas is backward, one manifestation is that some reservoirs have not been renovated for decades. The countermeasure is that the future infrastructure investment is biased towards rural areas, and the country needs at least about 1 trillion yuan of agricultural infrastructure investment.

Fifth, there is a lack of medical and social insurance in rural areas. Decades ago, barefoot doctors everywhere solved the medical problems of the people at the bottom, but at present, barefoot doctors in the past are basically unemployed or concentrated in villages and towns, counties and cities to open clinics, and there are no hospitals in large areas of rural areas. How can farmers solve the problem that it is far away and difficult to see a doctor? The social security standard of farmers is on the low side, who will bear it in the future?

Sixth, the problem of education in rural areas. Frequent school bus accidents are concentrated in rural areas, where there is a serious lack of education. The countermeasure is to properly feed the educational resources to the rural areas. at the same time, we should open up the educational opportunities for farmers' children in cities, such as abolishing the household registration of college entrance examination, setting up schools for migrant children, and so on.

Seventh, the contract with output leads to inefficiency. At present, due to policy restrictions, China's agricultural efficiency is very low. Since the reform and opening up, the so-called household contract responsibility system is only a "half-buck" in the process of actual implementation-only contracting, not co-production. With the exception of state-run farms, China's vast rural areas are based on family-based labor, and the mechanization that once prevailed has almost been interrupted.

The fundamental reason for the low efficiency in rural areas is that the land can not be transferred. At present, the rural land is worthless, and even if the land is expropriated, the compensation to the farmers is still very small. If farmers have the right to control the land, the land value of farmers will increase a lot, farmers are no longer poor, land has become their biggest capital.

As for the countermeasures, the separation of ownership, management right and income right should be carried out in rural areas. Farmers can choose to cooperate freely to set up farms according to the size of shares or farmland, so as to achieve real "co-production" and establish large farms. After the scale and mechanization of agriculture, it can not only reduce costs, but also expand the industrial chain, develop agricultural products processing industry, and carry out diversified operation.

Eighth, the social status of farmers is low. Farmers in China are not only inferior to urban residents in economic income, what is more serious is that farmers belong to the bottom of society, and the problem of identity has been ignored before.

In the future, China's countryside should have three characteristics: economically, agriculture should be brought into the modern industrial system, the welfare of the countryside should be integrated with the city in the social field, and at the same time, the invisible distinction of identity in China should be eliminated. so that farmers can truly become independent citizens of China.

For a long time, China's grain prices are not fully market-oriented, at the same time, agricultural subsidies are not in place. The 18th CPC National Congress mentioned the need to realize the modernization of agriculture in rural areas in the future. Realizing the modernization of agriculture and bringing it into the modern industrial system is far more far-sighted and more in line with reality than allowing farmers to go to the cities. The modernization of agriculture itself is also more reasonable than the complete replacement of agriculture by industry. From the perspective of national strategy, it is easier to create a balance of industrial structure and enhance the ability to resist economic turmoil. The United States is not only the largest country in the service industry in the world, but also the largest agricultural country in the world. The multi-level industrial structure makes the American economy have a great ability to resist risks and have a strong ability of self-regulation. This is also one of the secrets that the United States has dominated the world for many years.

The modernization of the countryside itself is more important than the transfer of farmers to the cities. One of the major characteristics of agricultural modernization is to integrate agriculture into the modern industrial system. The demand of modern farmers lies not only in economic development and the realization of equality of property development, but also in the improvement of identity and the realization of equality of social status and rights. Equal rights between urban and rural areas is one of the important strategies to narrow the income distribution gap and fill the social stratum gap in China.

Luo Tianhao (researcher of the Commercial Science and Technology quality Center of the State-owned assets Supervision and Administration Commission, author of cities of Great Powers)