A probe into the Paradox of "population decreasing and area increasing" in Rural areas

As of 2014, the urbanization rate in China has reached 54.7%, and a large number of rural people continue to transfer to the cities. In theory, with the outflow of population, the village should gradually shrink, but in fact, the scale of the village is accelerated by the way of "cake sharing" and "climbing along the road". Since 1978, the number of rural population in China has decreased by about 150 million, while the area of newly built housing has increased by about 34 million mu, and it is still expanding at the rate of about 1.5 million mu a year. The countryside shows the abnormal phenomenon of "population reduction and area increase". This will not only hinder the healthy development of urbanization, but also adversely affect the national food security and ecological environment.

The city weakens and lacks the responsibility of "urbanizing farmers", which restricts the citizenization of agricultural transfer population, and the overall planning of urban and rural areas must be strengthened to make the process of urbanization truly become the process of citizenization of agricultural transfer population.

The paradox of "population reduction and area increase" arises from the simultaneous expansion of cities that should be expanded and rural areas that should not be expanded in the process of urbanization. For a period of time, the city has achieved a high concentration of resources and rapid expansion, but its task of absorbing agricultural transfer population to settle in the city and become citizens has not been completed, and the lack of urban responsibility makes migrant workers neither regard the city as their own home, nor dare to give up homestead and housing in rural areas, mainly as follows: first, the city has left a demographic dividend and sent away the population debt. The age of migrant workers in China is mainly between the age of 45 years old, the supply of migrant workers over 45 years old has exceeded the demand, and the employment opportunities are decreasing. In terms of settlement policy, the city mainly absorbs "soldiers of big commercial universities" and farmers in urban villages and suburban villages who are citizenized because of land expropriation, while migrant workers who are mainly engaged in manufacturing, construction and traditional services do not fall. This situation actually leaves the demographic dividend in the city, while the population debt is sent back to the countryside. If the dual division of dividends and liabilities is formed between urban and rural areas, it will become another "gap" for our country to build a well-off society in an all-round way and cross the middle-income trap. Second, the city has accepted public resources and failed to share services. In recent years, the allocation of public resources has been tilted to cities, and urban infrastructure and public services have been further improved. however, due to the lack of convergence of basic public service systems between urban and rural areas, 270 million migrant workers and their families have not been able to fully enjoy the basic public services of urban residents in the areas of education, employment, medical care, old-age care, indemnificatory housing, etc., and the "marginalized" social status of migrant workers has not changed. Migrant workers have failed to take off their peasant hats and are still regarded as "passers-by" of the city. Third, farmers use "hollow" villages as a "sustainable livelihood" to deal with urban exclusion. Due to the free nature of homestead, unlimited use and no retention cost, farmers are more inclined to occupy homestead as much as possible. at the same time, due to circulation restrictions, migrant workers in cities can not achieve property rights and interests through the transfer of homestead, resulting in long-term vacancy of homestead. Relevant research shows that about 90% of migrant workers want to retain contracted land and homestead after settling in the city, and migrant workers take the retention of contracted land as the final guarantee and "sustainable livelihood". They regard homestead as their ultimate refuge and reliable real estate, and they have to go back to their hometown to build houses after earning money in the city, so that the village shows a "reverse expansion phenomenon" of "population reduction and increase in area".

To solve the problem of "double expansion", cities need to take responsibility, in accordance with the train of thought of coordinating urban and rural development, to solve the problem of "three 100 million people" as the starting point, to persist in using cities to lead rural areas and industry to promote agriculture, and to truly realize the goal of urbanization to "turn" farmers into citizens. First, it is necessary to strengthen the citizenization responsibility of the governments of the importing regions and promote the full coverage of basic public services in cities and towns. The provincial government in the place of inflow should assume the responsibility of equally covering the urban resident population with public services such as education and medical care, and the municipal government should bear the responsibility for the operation of public facilities and the expenditure of local public matters such as indemnificatory housing subsidies, public health, employment services, social assistance and so on. Mega-cities and mega-cities should grasp the balance between controlling population size and citizenization, and turn qualified migrant workers into citizens as far as possible, even if they cannot realize citizenization, they should provide corresponding basic public services with residence permits as the carrier. and gradually establish the interest compensation mechanism for the outflow government or long-term employment of migrant workers in the inflow area. Second, we should further deepen the reform of the household registration system. The opinions of the State Council on further promoting the Reform of the Household Registration system issued in 2014 is a great progress in breaking the dual household registration system and weakening the unfairness attached to the household registration system, but it is still a transitional and step-by-step reform. The settlement system introduced by big cities, especially mega-cities, is still a preference for high-end talents, although the threshold for migrant workers to settle down has been divided into steps, but in fact it has been raised. Big cities should take a more positive attitude to promote the citizenization of agricultural transfer population, so as to prevent the structural contradiction between large, medium and small cities and population quality and high, middle and low income, so as to bring new imbalance. Third, we should speed up the reform of the land system. It is necessary to co-ordinate urban construction land and rural collective construction land and homestead, and strive to build a unified, open, competitive and orderly market system of construction land, so as to achieve the same market entry, the same right and the same price of rural collective construction land and state-owned land. It is necessary to expand the trial of linking the increase and decrease of urban and rural construction land, expand the scope of overall planning, and ensure that the quantity and quality of cultivated land do not decline, and the interests of farmers are guaranteed. Promote the link between the construction land index and the citizenization of the agricultural transfer population, so that the new and homestead corresponding construction land indicators become assets that can be traded in the market, so that farmers can go to the city with assets.

The "collection but not appointment" of rural collective construction land, the "disorder of housing construction" and the "inability of land management" are the historical and realistic factors of the paradox of "population reduction and area increase". We must plan the village construction scientifically, speed up the improvement of land laws and regulations, and strengthen the supervision of law enforcement.

There are historical and realistic reasons for the unreasonable layout and disorderly construction of villages. First, the layout of village housing is natural and historical. Affected by the traditional mode of production and residential concept, farmers have long been accustomed to scattered living in the form of natural courtyards, random location of houses, staggered and chaotic layout. Before the 1990s, the state had no planning requirements for rural construction, and village construction was in a spontaneous state. Although the state began to work out the overall land use planning of villages and towns in 1992, under the influence of the thought of attaching importance to cities and neglecting townships, the investment in rural planning is too small, lack of foresight, and homestead, free land, auxiliary land for life and production are mixed with other agricultural land. the distribution pattern of villagers' houses is full of stars. Second, the village shows a state of extension expansion. One is the linear expansion of "climbing along the road", in which new houses are built wherever the road leads. Satellite photos of land change survey show that most of the self-built illegal land in rural areas are distributed on both sides of county and township roads and in urban and rural areas. The other is "cake-sharing" block expansion, the new housing continues to extend to the cultivated land outside the village, coupled with the lack of effective timely follow-up measures, the new construction does not demolish the old, and the village presents hollowing out and empty waste. Third, "multiple houses in one family" and "breaking the line exceeding the standard" occur frequently. The Land Management Law clearly stipulates that farmers can only own one house, but in practice, there exists the phenomenon of "one family with multiple houses" and "broken line exceeding the standard" to varying degrees. The data of the second national land survey show that the per capita land of rural villages in China has reached 240 square meters, exceeding the upper limit of the national standard. Fourth, law enforcement departments are "powerless" to manage the construction of houses in rural areas. The examination and approval of rural housing construction involves land, urban and rural planning and other management departments and local township governments, there are many problems in construction control and management, resulting in disorderly housing construction has not been properly regulated. Although the "Land Management Law", "Urban and Rural Planning Law" and "Highway Law" clearly define the conditions under which illegal houses can be demolished, in specific operations, house demolition needs to be submitted to the court for enforcement. As disputes involving rural land are easy to give rise to rural letters and visits, the courts generally refuse to accept them.

With the acceleration of urbanization, it is an inevitable trend for cities to increase and villages to decrease. To solve the problem of "villagization" of land, we should not only reasonably plan the village layout, but also strengthen land management. First, scientific planning to guide the orderly construction of villages. According to the overall land use planning, we should scientifically determine the number, layout, scope and land use scale of rural residential areas, and scientifically determine the regional layout and construction scale of production, living and service areas. we should do a good job in village layout planning, village renovation and construction planning, and farmers' concentrated residential area planning, and guide the orderly construction and intensive development of villages. The second is to speed up the improvement of land policies and regulations. Although the construction of supporting regulations has made great progress since the implementation of the current Land Management Law, with the exploration and practice of new urbanization, China's existing laws and regulations can no longer adapt to the development and changes of the situation. At present, China does not have a special law and regulation to adjust rural housing and land, and rural homestead management depends to a large extent on normative documents and local policy adjustment. It is necessary to speed up the legislative work on the circulation of collective construction land and the reform of the land expropriation system in accordance with the Land Management Law, and gradually formulate laws and regulations such as the Land use Planning Law, the Land use Control Law and the Land Supervision Law, and further improve the legal system of rural land. Revise and improve the rules and regulations of rural homestead management, improve the land use control system, strict homestead examination and approval procedures, clarify the specific punishment measures for disorderly over-standard housing construction and idle land, and provide a basis for land law enforcement at the level of policies and regulations. The third is to strengthen the supervision and management of land law enforcement departments. Strengthen supervision and management means, comprehensively use administrative, legal and economic means to manage rural housing construction, carry out comprehensive renovation of rural land, effectively deal with the problems of "hollow villages" and disorderly housing construction, and promote efficient and rational use of rural land.

China's family structure has changed from the traditional pursuit of "four generations in the same house" and "three generations in the same house" to the miniaturization of the family scale and the core of the family structure, which forms a rigid demand for land, and must comply with the change of the family structure and the trend of intergenerational division. we will actively improve public service facilities and vigorously develop the cause of providing for the aged.

Since the reform and opening up, the miniaturization of family size has increasingly become an important feature of the change of family structure in urban and rural areas. On the one hand, the change of family structure has a rigid demand for construction land. Judging from the change and distribution of the number of households in China, the top three in the total number of households in 1982 were 5 and more than 5, 4 and 3, respectively. From 1990 to now, the top three in the total number of households have evolved into 3-person, 2-person and 1-person households. To a large extent, nuclear families, empty-nest families, dink families, single families and single-parent families are becoming important forms of family structure in urban and rural areas. As housing is the resting place for every family and an important material for human survival, development and enjoyment, the demand for housing has brought about the expansion of the scale of construction land. On the other hand, the reduction of rural households has led to the "abnormal" expansion of the village. In the changes of rural population in China, the actual resident population is decreasing, but the number of households is increasing instead of decreasing. The current Land Management Law establishes the system of homestead recovery, but there are no corresponding provisions on the specific policy boundaries, recovery procedures and compensation standards for recovery, resulting in the use of rural homestead in a state of incremental supply for a long time. Stock activation and utilization is basically zero. Especially with the emergence of "counter-urbanization" and the "hot" of rural homestead in recent years, it is even more difficult to withdraw from rural homestead.

To solve the problem of "double expansion" brought about by the transformation of family structure, we should conform to the trend and focus on dredging. The first is to solve the contradiction between supply and demand in the city by promoting the healthy development of the real estate market and the construction of indemnificatory apartment. Give full play to the decisive role of the market in the allocation of resources, actively guide the real estate market to adjust its structure, maintain rigid demand, promote improvement and steady growth, and meet the multi-level market needs of residents; at the same time, according to the trend of smaller family structure, adjust and optimize the area of housing structure and promote intensive development. It is necessary to improve the basic housing security system, actively provide public rental housing for migrant workers who have stable employment in cities and towns, and make housing security cover the vast number of migrant workers. Second, it is necessary to strengthen guidance and management in rural areas. Due to the imminent confirmation of homestead rights and the shortage of construction land indicators, the examination and approval of homestead has been suspended in recent years. However, the rural youth are faced with the rigid demand brought about by marriage and the "butterfly effect" brought by the homestead fever, which leads to the problem of illegal construction of contracted land along the road through private adjustment of contracted land or private sale and transfer of contracted land. In this regard, it is necessary to strengthen guidance, guide the new generation of migrant workers to return to their hometown and build houses to buy houses in cities and towns, and at the same time strengthen the management of rural land and the legal governance of new construction and random construction. Third, vigorously develop the cause of the elderly in urban and rural areas. At present, China has entered an aging society, but from the perspective of urban and rural population distribution, rural aging is higher than urban aging. According to the division of the International Labor Organization, the labor force over 45 years old accounts for more than 15% of the total labor force in a country or region. At present, 32.5% of agricultural workers are over 50 years old in China, which has far exceeded international standards. The problem of aging of agricultural labor force is serious. It is necessary to vigorously develop the cause of providing for the aged, carry out a pilot project of reverse mortgage old-age insurance for the elderly, and form a market-oriented exit mechanism for housing for the elderly. In particular, we should attach great importance to the cause of providing for the aged in rural areas, promote the trial of a new rural social old-age insurance system, gradually establish a system for the government to purchase old-age services for the widowed, poor, and elderly, and timely explore ways to link homestead transfer with rural old-age support.