On December 29, 2023, the last executive meeting of the year was held to study measures to further promote people-oriented new urbanization. The meeting demanded that the urbanization of the agricultural transfer population should be placed in a prominent position, solve the problems of the masses, and strive to make up for the shortcomings of urban infrastructure and management services, so as to make the city healthier, safer and more livable.
Experts said that at present, promoting urbanization is still the largest domestic demand, which is conducive to stabilizing economic growth. However, the urbanization of the rural migrant population should not be limited to settlement, but should focus more energy on solving the problem of equalization of public services for the unsettled population, especially in the education of children and housing.
"At present, the promotion of urbanization is still the largest domestic demand".
Since the reform and opening up, China has experienced the world's largest and fastest urbanization process. In 2012, after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clarified the concept of "new urbanization" for the first time, China's urbanization process entered a new stage.
In 2014 and 2022, the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020) and the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2021-2035) were released as the first round of top-level urbanization plans in China. In July 2022, the "14th Five-Year Plan for New Urbanization" was further promulgated to clarify the goals, tasks and policy measures of the new urbanization strategy.
According to the 2023 ** work report, in the past five years, the urbanization rate of China's permanent population has increased from 602% to 652%。This is the first time that the urbanization rate of China's permanent population has exceeded 65%, which means that the goal of "increasing the urbanization rate of permanent residents to 65%" proposed in the 14th Five-Year Plan has been achieved ahead of schedule.
So, as China's urbanization process enters the second half, what potential and space will exist for the development of new urbanization?
Fan Yi, dean and researcher of the Institute of Finance and Economics, pointed out that there is still room for the improvement of China's urbanization level. From a national perspective, there is still room for more than 10 percentage points in the period of rapid urbanizationFrom a regional point of view, the level of urbanization in the central and western regions of China is relatively low, and there is still more space.
In the future, China's urbanization will still be in a period of relatively rapid growth, and it will still be an important driving force for economic growth. Fan Yi said.
Second, the rapid urbanization development time and speed in the past have left many inadequate and unbalanced problems in the development that need to be solved. For example, Fan Yi said that the incomplete urbanization of the population has brought about the problem of urban dual population, and the dividends of population urbanization have not been fully released. Another example is the action of making up for the weaknesses of county urbanization implemented in 2020, which aims to solve the problem of insufficient infrastructure and public service facilities in the county.
At present, urbanization is still the largest domestic demand, which is conducive to stabilizing economic growth and laying a solid foundation for long-term developmentPromoting urbanization can bring about the optimization of the spatial distribution of population, which is conducive to promoting the construction of a new development pattern in which domestic and international circulations promote each other. Fan Yi said.
The meeting also pointed out that further promoting the people-oriented new urbanization is not only conducive to stimulating consumption and investment, continuously releasing the potential of domestic demand, promoting the construction of a new development pattern, but also conducive to improving people's livelihood and promoting social fairness and justice, which is the only way to promote Chinese-style modernization.
The urbanization of the rural migrant population should be placed in a prominent position
The Standing Committee of the People's Republic of China mentioned that it is necessary to firmly grasp the important principle of people-oriented, put the urbanization of the rural migrant population in a prominent position, and further deepen the reform of the household registration system. Fan Yi said that to promote the issue of urbanization of the agricultural transfer population, the first thing is to lower the threshold for farmers to settle down.
Behind the rising urbanization rate of permanent residents, another indicator has also attracted attention. On December 13, 2023, Han Wenxiu, deputy director in charge of daily work of the **Finance Office and director of the **Agricultural Office, said that the urbanization rate of the registered population is 17 lower than that of the permanent population5 percentage points, closing this gap itself, will unleash huge social demand.
In fact, in recent years, with the promulgation of a series of relevant documents, China's household registration system reform has made a historic breakthrough. Data show that tens of millions of rural people move to cities and towns every year, a total of 1400 million rural people live in cities and towns.
At present, cities with a permanent urban population of less than 3 million have basically lifted the settlement restrictions, and the settlement conditions for cities with a permanent urban population of more than 3 million have been greatly relaxed.
On March 13, 2023, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province solicited opinions and proposed to further liberalize the settlement of academic qualifications, and at the same time fully liberalize the conditions for urban settlement in Tonglu, Jiande, and Chun'an counties (cities);In February, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province issued a document to restart the three-year suspension of the points household policy, with a total of 20,000 household indicatorsSichuan recently proposed that it will adjust and optimize the settlement policy in Chengdu, and other cities and counties will completely cancel the settlement restrictions.
Considering the voluntariness of the settlement of the rural migrant population, it is not appropriate to limit the goal of urbanization to settlement, but to focus more on solving the problem of equalizing public services for the unsettled population, after all, the population flow will exist for a long time and will not disappear because of the development of urbanization. Fan Yi said that whether it is at present or in the future, the equalization of public services is a practical problem to be faced.
The National Standing Committee mentioned that investment in education, medical care, elderly care, housing and other fields should be strengthened, and the unsettled permanent residents should be promoted to enjoy basic public services equally, so as to solve the problems of the people's urgency, hardship and longing. Efforts should be made to make up for the shortcomings of urban infrastructure and management services, improve the carrying capacity of the economy and population, and make cities healthier, safer and more livable.
Fan Yi, for example, can focus on children's education and housing. Education is related to the next generation and is the issue that the people are most concerned aboutThe housing problem mainly involves the input of all parties, if it is fully borne by **, the scale is huge, in fact, there are innovative ways to use, such as promoting the participation of multiple social capital.
To promote the economic development of the county, it is necessary to do a good job in "local specialties".
The recent economic work conference also made arrangements for new urbanization. The meeting emphasized that it is necessary to organically combine the promotion of new urbanization with the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas, promote the two-way flow of various elements, promote the construction of new urbanization with county towns as important carriers, and form a new pattern of urban-rural integration development.
Rural revitalization is to be realized in the context of urbanization, and it is inseparable from the support of urbanization, so it is necessary to organically combine the two, and the establishment of an institutional mechanism for urban-rural integration development is an effective way to promote the organic combination of new urbanization and rural revitalization. Fan Yi said.
Fan Yi introduced that promoting the economic development of the county is an important measure to promote the organic combination of new urbanization and rural revitalization, and it is necessary to further promote the urbanization construction with the county as the carrier, accelerate the completion of the shortcomings and weaknesses of the county's public services and infrastructure, and take the county as an important carrier to solve the urbanization of the nearby population. In the construction of county seats, it is necessary to give prominence to regional cultural characteristics, and at the same time, it is necessary to avoid blind expansion and make efforts to refine development and management.
In Fan Yi's view, since the reform and opening up, under the role of the market economy, China has formed a number of counties with strong economic carrying capacity, but these strong counties are still a minority after all. To make up for the shortcomings of the county economy, we must choose the type of industry suitable for the development of the county, and focus on the real economy.
It should be noted that the county-level secondary industry accounts for more than 40% of the country's secondary industry, and the county is the main carrier to promote the development of the real economy, and the real economy is the inevitable choice for the development of the county-level industry. Fan Yi said that it is proposed to maintain the overall proportion of the manufacturing industry not to decline, which provides an important opportunity for the development of the county, and the future needs to introduce relevant policies to create good conditions for the development of the real economy in the county, and promote the formation of a reasonable industrial division of labor between the central city and the county, which can not only reduce the pressure of population concentration in megacities, but also contribute to the safety of the chain industrial chain and the overall security and development.
Fan Yi suggested that when the county selects the industry, it should be based on the advantages of local resources, do a good job in the "local specialty" article, choose the type of industry suitable for local characteristics and resource endowment, and study some relatively mature and standardized industries that are most suitable for the county.
At present, it is necessary to do a good job in the integration of digital technology and local industries, do a good job in the construction of relevant digital infrastructure, provide digital transformation services, and promote the process of industrial digitalization. Fan Yi said.