The increase in the "gold content" of rural household registration is far from the end of household registration reform

A reporter of the Xinhua News Agency recently conducted a survey in several provinces and found that after the launch of the comprehensive pilot project of the new type of urbanization, most small and medium-sized pilot cities have fully liberalized farmers to settle in cities, but before the "zero threshold", farmers' willingness to settle down is generally not high. There is a county town with only more than 200 people from rural areas to non-farmers in 2015. With the gradual increase of the "gold content" of rural hukou, a considerable number of farmers are willing to buy houses, work and live in cities, but choose to keep their hukou in rural areas. The urbanization rate of household registered population in pilot cities is generally lower than expected.

Because of the increase in the "gold content" of rural hukou, people with agricultural household registration give up the opportunity to settle in cities, which is no longer news in some developed areas. For example, less than 20% of freshmen moved their hukou to school in 2010, according to Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University. As a provincial university, the vast majority of students come from the province. The students surveyed generally said they were unwilling to give up various preferential policies for farmers' hukou. Today, even in areas where the economy is relatively less developed, because the rural hukou has various added values such as homestead and contracted land, the enthusiasm of the local people to "convert agriculture to non-agriculture" is not high.

It should be pointed out that these villagers who are unwilling to give up their rural hukou are not giving up urban life. Whether they are rural college students who are admitted to universities, or villagers who have the opportunity to settle down with "zero threshold", many of them work and live in the city, and can also enjoy urban education, basic public health services and public cultural services. Although they are not "urbanized" in the sense of household registration, they are actually urbanites.

On the other hand, some "farmers" who have obtained an urban hukou through college entrance examination and military resettlement now hope to return to the embrace of the "countryside." Of course, this does not mean that they are willing to go back to the village to farm, but that they want to get the welfare of the place where they were born and grew up. However, the current household registration policy does not provide space for "non-conversion to agriculture". It is much more difficult for a city dweller to become a farmer than a farmer to become a city dweller.

No matter what reason they gave up their rural hukou in the early years, now they who want to return to the "countryside" may feel unfair just because of a hukou card, the childhood playmates left in the village can get homestead and even have dividends on all kinds of income in the village. and people who go out can no longer enjoy it. And those who only have a hukou in the village, I have long lived in the city, no longer make direct contributions to rural development, but can continue to enjoy the benefits of the village, it does not seem to be very reasonable.

If "urban-rural integration" is regarded as the purpose of household registration reform, then whether it is high "gold content" in urban hukou or high "gold content" in rural hukou, it is not a sign of the success of household registration reform. The issue of household registration is intertwined, not in the household registration policy itself, but in the interests attached to household registration. In the past, everyone was proud to be a city dweller because there were too many rights and interests that farmers could not enjoy. Now, the hukou in the village is "valuable". Although it shows the development made in the countryside, it is also a manifestation of the dual structure between urban and rural areas.

A person's identity should directly reflect his actual situation, not a few lines in the hukou book. Farmers naturally become urbanites when they migrate to cities. Similarly, urbanites also have the right to obtain the means of agricultural production. It is no longer news that college students go to rural areas to engage in agricultural production, and some urbanites also have the desire to live in rural areas. There may be more and more such "new farmers". The advanced concepts and technologies they bring to rural areas will become a powerful driving force for rural and agricultural modernization. They are more qualified to be "farmers" than those who would rather have their land abandoned and their rural houses vacant than those who want to keep a rural hukou.

In the traditional concept, rural areas and agriculture are almost synonymous with backward productive forces. Escaping from rural areas seems to be the right and only choice, and it has also become an irreversible behavior in practical operation. In fact, rural areas are not equal to backwardness, and cities are not necessarily so advanced. Only by stubbornly blindly believing in the theory of rural backwardness can the gap between rural areas and cities become wider and wider. The same is true of household registration reform. In the future, we should see not only the needs of farmers to enjoy urban life, but also the needs of urban people to engage in agricultural production and live in rural areas, and on this basis, household registration will be decoupled from interests and linked to actual identity. is the ultimate goal of household registration reform and urban-rural integration.