What if there is no one to cultivate land in rural China?

Agricultural rotation and fallow land are conducive to the sustainable development of agricultural production, so a large amount of agricultural land is a good thing. However, the fundamental way out for agricultural economic growth is to replace labor with capital. therefore, we do not have to bemoan more and more "hollow villages" or cheer the increase in land rent rate and land price.

China's economic growth is not only the need of liberating the productive forces, but also the need of human liberation. From the perspective of realistic economic structure, to achieve this goal, we must achieve the integrated development of urban and rural areas, and urbanization must lead the integrated development of urban and rural areas. After the foundation of national industrialization has been laid, the layout of cities, the hierarchical gradient of urban scale and the incremental adjustment of urban functions should take rural modernization as the primary constraint. Only in this way can China's urbanization reflect the requirements of humanistic principles.

The fundamental feature of China's resource allocation adjustment is that under the guidance of the signal that there is a greater shortage of cheap labor in cities than in rural areas, cheap labor in rural areas continues to flow to cities. This is the main factor to improve the efficiency of resource allocation in China. In the past 30 years, China's rapid economic growth has benefited from urbanization, and it will continue to grow with the help of urbanization in the future. Urbanization is the engine of economic growth in China's transition period. The fundamental goal of urbanization is to realize modernization on the basis of sustainable development. If this is done well, it will be conducive to China's modernization transformation, and if something goes wrong, it will delay development and lead to waste.

Urbanization is the result of the mutual promotion of market and professional division of labor. The main way to reduce transaction costs is for practitioners to gather in cities to engage in economic activities. In view of the fact that it is impossible for China to construct a modern social division of labor system on the basis of 3 million natural villages, we must realize the economic and social integration of urban and rural areas on the basis of promoting urbanization. instead of realizing the economic and social integration of urban and rural areas on the basis of retaining a large rural population. The government spends money on building a "new countryside" to make farmers happy to stay in the countryside and enjoy their lives, but it is by no means allowing more farmers to stay in the countryside.

The technological progress of the most important link of the modern agricultural industry chain is realized by relying on the city. In fact, in the modern agricultural economy, the contribution of technology and capital to agricultural output is far more than that of land and labor. After World War II, the total agricultural output of the world has increased several times, but the land has not increased basically, and the agricultural labor force has been greatly reduced, which shows that the main contributors to the growth of agricultural economy come from technology and capital. The result is the decrease of land rent rate and the relative decrease of land price. Seed cultivation, fertilizer research and production, and agricultural equipment research and development, which have made great contributions to agriculture, are all completed by cities.

In countries where the land market is relatively sound, land prices are much lower than we thought. When the author visited Poland, I learned about some land prices there. One hectare of poor farmland is about 4000 euros, or 2700 yuan per mu, while the better farmland is 14000 yuan per mu. The construction land determined by the planning in rural areas is not expensive, which is about 130000 yuan per mu.

Agricultural rotation and fallow land are conducive to the sustainable development of agricultural production, so a large amount of agricultural land is a good thing. However, the fundamental way out for agricultural economic growth is to replace labor with capital. therefore, we do not have to bemoan more and more "hollow villages" or cheer the increase in land rent rate and land price.

Urban-rural integration mainly refers to the unification of urban and rural factor markets between urban and rural areas, that is, apart from allowing some minimum government intervention involving important social and public interests, the existing barriers of land, capital and labor between urban and rural areas should be broken to maximize the decisive role of the market in the flow of factors.

The emergence of cities is related to war and trade. After the industrial revolution, cities have become the conditions for industrial growth. What people ignore is that agriculture also has an impact on urban layout. The area close to the city has a higher level of agricultural development. China's population distribution will change for some time to come, but several key factors may play a role in the inflection point of the rate of change.

First, the distribution and scale of existing cities. The existing urban structure is not a relatively stable structure, but the current structure will have an important impact on the future development of the city. The continuous improvement of China's urbanization rate is indeed a major event in human history. However, a major defect of China's urban development is that it is divorced from the needs of agricultural development, which is conducive to the rapid growth of large cities for industry and commerce, while the development of small cities needed for agricultural progress is depressed. It is impossible for us to overthrow the existing urban pattern, but we should pay attention to the development of small cities in the future incremental adjustment.

Second, the income of professional farmers staying in rural areas is consistent with that of urban residents, which is the most important factor. According to our estimation, it is a node when the national professional peasant household reaches about 30 million. After this time point, the income of urban and rural residents can be basically equal.

Third, in terms of public services, traffic structure, information exchange, etc., there is an average need for one city for every 1200 square kilometers. Chinese mainland is about 4 million square kilometers suitable for human habitation and has the conditions to develop competitive agriculture. Taking into account the timing of rural roads and bus services, at least one city for every 1200 square kilometers will be conducive to agricultural development, so China needs at least 3300 cities.

Fourth, counter-urbanized population. Judging from the situation that Chinese farmers still live in rural areas after they have been separated from agricultural production, the counter-urbanized population determined by historical factors already has a large number. Taking the non-agricultural population living close to rural areas as counter-urbanized population, and considering a series of factors, it is estimated that there will be a stable state when the scale of non-agricultural population living in rural areas is about twice that of professional peasant households in the future. that is, about 60 million households.

Fifth, education and school setting factors. The establishment of rural schools is of key significance for realizing the equalization of basic public services in urban and rural areas and the intergenerational inheritance of poverty eradication. Considering this factor, in most rural areas of our country, 30,000 primary schools need to be built with high standards. This also means that at least 30,000 large settlements are needed in rural areas, and the rest are smaller settlements for professional farmers.

According to the above assumptions and inferences, we can generally outline a relatively stable population and urban layout in the future. The total population reaches 1.5 billion, which is estimated to be a relatively stable population size in our country in a certain period of time. If there is such a population and urban layout, China's agriculture will be better, and rural education will be better, which is conducive to agricultural modernization and social stability.