Friend guide. Historically, the countryside was originally "prosperous in all industries", and farmers have always been producers of "all industries". At present, some experts have copied the theories of textbooks, saying that they have to specialize in the rural economy, and that peasants are the labor force for farming.
In the process of promoting the new type of urbanization with the integration of urban and rural areas as the guiding ideology, it is necessary to keep small and medium-sized enterprises in the county area, provide employment opportunities for farmers nearby, and reduce the cost of going out to work. This is one of China's important strategies to promote rural revitalization. Accordingly, we should not only pay attention to the issue of agricultural development, which is called the primary industry, but also pay more attention to how to make use of the most abundant spatial ecological resources concentrated in the countryside and give full play to its comparative advantages of "ecological industrialization and industrial ecology" to the greatest extent, so that the vast number of peasants can become rich.
Note: This article is based on Professor Wen Tiejun's book "Breaking the Situation and Rural Revitalization: 11 Thoughts on Chinese-style Agricultural and Rural Modernization" and Professor Wen's interview with "Economists' Suggestions on China's Economy in 2024".
At the end of 2023, the ** Economic Work Conference and the ** Rural Work Conference both emphasized the need to "promote the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside", and the importance of these requirements should be analyzed in combination with the current macro situation in today's profound and complex changes and challenges in the domestic and foreign environment.
In the past, China's development model was called labor-intensive, processing-oriented, low-end commodity production. This model requires large imports of raw materials and exports of products to sustain employment and economic growth. This model of "three to one supplement", that is, processing and export-oriented economy, has been significantly impacted since 2018, when the former Trump launched the war against China, and has led to a large number of industrial transfers, resulting in a great impact on the development zones or development areas dominated by this type of economy in China's coastal areas.
For example, in a well-known development zone on the southeast coast, a large number of enterprises have moved away, making it difficult for migrant workers to continue to get employment opportunities, forming the so-called "second return".
Tens of millions of "second returnees" are actually unemployed. This requires the creation of job opportunities in a multi-sectoral field related to agriculture or rural areas. If there is no employment, there will be social problems. No country in the world can afford to lose tens of millions of unemployment, which is not called unemployment.
For example, only a few million people in the United States are unemployed, and the employment situation has improved so far, but there are still social problems such as "zero yuan purchase". In contrast, China has remained stable to this day, thanks to 20 years of continuous rural development. If the country is to be stable, it must use rural revitalization to ensure that returnees have jobs, food to eat, and places to live.
In addition, since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019, the city's small and medium-sized enterprises have suffered a huge blow, with many shops along the street closing and office vacancy rates rising significantly. For migrant workers who have lost their jobs, returning to the countryside is the cheapest option to live in.
Someone has always said, "Isn't returning to your hometown just farming?" "Who told you that when you go back to the countryside, you can only farm? Historically, the countryside was originally "prosperous in all industries". In fact, farmers are not only producers of primary industries such as agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry, but also producers of "all industries" since the beginning of China's 10,000-year-old agricultural civilization.
In the countryside, temple fairs and village fairs have long driven the prosperity of the "five elements and eight works", such as masons, carpenters, tailors, as well as sewing, blacksmiths, and pot-making craftsmen. Therefore, is it appropriate for some experts to copy the theories of textbooks and insist that the rural economy be specialized, and that the peasants should just farm the land?
What's more, rural revitalization has activated a large number of new business formats and provided diversified employment opportunities for returnees.
For example, in a village, more than 100 peasant families were originally inhabited, but only 18 elderly families remained. We work hand in hand with the local county**, and with the county and township levels**, to protect and maintain these old houses and buildings, and use one-third of the demolition funds for conservation, maintenance, renovation and development. Now, this once quiet mountain village has become incredibly lively. There are more than 30 businesses that come to open here alone, and on weekends, there is a constant stream of tourists, even causing traffic jams. Another family decided to relocate to this quiet mountain village because they felt depressed in the city. They found peace of mind here, and the mental state of the whole family improved dramatically.
These stories are a testament to the new vibe that is emerging in the countryside, and not just in traditional farming.
Of course, we also farm there. We have restored a lot of abandoned rice fields, and we have mobilized everyone to recognize them – not to pledge donations, but to recognize the land. Consumers pay for production, we help the land, and the rice grown helps consumers to store, or express to consumers. All of this has a relationship of integration between urban and rural areas.
I have always said that rural revitalization is the third asset pool, and everyone has to keep up with the rhythm of the best.
Now, we have formed a huge excess capital, and the city is already a "red ocean", and it is difficult to find good investment opportunities.
In fact, the biggest "blue ocean" is in the countryside. From the construction of the new countryside in 2005 to the present, the largest expenditure of the state finance is the rural areas, forming trillions of precipitated assets, which is nothing more than considering what methods to use to activate it, from which income can be formed.
What is the combination of these precipitated assets to activate? It must be combined with rural revitalization, "two mountains", and ecology, with special emphasis on ecological industrialization, industrial ecology, and deepening of ecological capital.
However, some financial sectors have ignored these issues and are still stuck in the "red sea" of the highly competitive market, where they are not only unable to make progress, but may also choke on water and even face the risk of being eliminated from the market.
At present, some people in our financial system are trying to regulate rural credit activities while copying the Western financial system led by the United States, its entire set of operating methods, and even the legal system. The United States is a global control dominated by financial capital, which we cannot learn.
Now in the field of rural revitalization, what is lacking is a management system for supporting financial products, financial systems and various financial instruments, so why not work this? Only by combining the financial supply-side reform with the agricultural supply-side reform can we break a path in 2024.
Now the third asset pool in the countryside has been created, but how to "inject water", or how to form its own income in the process of "water injection" of large capital? This is a new topic that needs to be investigated.
For example, if you invest in the wellness industry in the city, you will probably just build a nursing home in a cluster of buildings. However, in the development of rural health care, industries such as health care and elderly care have presented a diversified integration of business formats.
I saw a cultural cluster in a village in the mountains of Zhejiang. At the heart of this cluster is a centuries-old, quaint compound. The compound is successively equipped with a photography base, a cultural and creative base and other diversified functional areas, and now it has become a tourist attraction vying to check in. Such an industrial cluster in the village is actually an in-depth excavation and utilization of the connotation of rural culture, and various training, exchanges and other undertakings have also flourished.
These cases are rich in implications for those who still focus on urban industrial clusters. They should seriously explore how to turn these rural resources into investment returns for urban-rural integration. To achieve this goal, the key is to be closely connected with the humanistic and social environment of the countryside, and deeply understand and respect its unique value.
The relevant management departments should do more to provide guidance and help for capital to intervene in rural revitalization or enterprises to participate in the cooperative economy. First of all, we must study the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party One of the five characteristics of Chinese modernization is the modernization of "harmonious coexistence between man and nature", and agriculture itself has the characteristics of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. Therefore, it is necessary not to forcibly change the harmonious coexistence between man and nature into the destruction of ecology, environment, and resources, to change the extensive quantitative growth of the past to a qualitative and efficient growth, and to find a point that is conducive to the combination of surplus capital and a large amount of ecological resources in the rural areas in the process of transforming them into industries, so that it is possible to adjust the serious imbalance between urban and rural areas.
* The Economic Work Conference 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 factors, promote the construction of new urbanization with county towns as important carriers, and form a new pattern of urban-rural integrated development.
Originally, our country expected China's urbanization rate to reach 70% by 2030, and now the urbanization rate has reached 6616%。
But in fact, it is difficult for a large number of people to enter the city to establish a long-term stable living pattern, which is mainly reflected in the fact that there are still 3There are 300 million floating people, which is unimaginable in other countries. Originally, our country was designed to convert these populations into urban dwellers through urbanization, but this goal has not been achieved for many years. This is not because the city lacks the capacity to accept it, but because the migrant workers themselves have doubts and difficulties. Many people who go to the cities to work are not willing to give up their houses, land and other means of production in the countryside, even if these resources are idle, they still want to keep them. This stems mainly from their concerns about whether they have a stable income and basic security in the city.
The real problem is that the employment system in the city has little protection for migrant workers. If their five insurances and one housing fund are added, the labor cost will increase by 50 or 60 percent, so that China's so-called relatively low comparative advantage of labor will not exist, and it will further lead to the outflow of labor-intensive industries. On the other hand, when these industries continue to move out under the pressure of labor costs, the urban unemployment rate rises, how can we stabilize the more than 300 million migrant workers?
At present, there is a village-based co-ordinated medical insurance in rural areas, and although it is not possible to reimburse the full amount, the reimbursement rate for medical treatment in county-level hospitals is still relatively high. However, if they need to travel to a big city like Beijing, the reimbursement rate is significantly lower, reflecting the uneven allocation of medical resources.
Everywhere is "grabbing people". In order to attract and retain population, sub-county areas need to rationally allocate various public resources. At present, our work in this area is far from being limited to oral discussions. Therefore, instead of overemphasizing urbanization, it is better to closely combine the new urbanization with the development of the real economy of small and medium-sized enterprises in a down-to-earth manner. The threshold for this combination is relatively low below the county level, because the basic security of migrant workers is still in the rural areas, and they pay insurance through the village-level medical and pension insurance system and form a unified social security within the village.
The new type of urbanization aims to promote the real economy and small and medium-sized enterprises to take root and develop in sub-county areas with lower thresholds and costs, so that migrant workers can find employment closer to home and at a lower cost. In this way, the industry can be developed within the county, and farmers can share in the benefits of this, while the cost of living is relatively low, and traffic congestion caused by large population movements during peak periods such as holidays is avoided.
Through this model, development between urban and rural areas and regions will become more balanced, and social stability will be significantly improved. This strategy is the core strategy of building a new type of county economy proposed by the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in the face of the complex international situation and unprecedented challenges in history. This is why we emphasize the new type of urbanization. The new type of urbanization needs to focus on the implementation of the urban-rural integration strategy, and this strategy should be implemented in the county economy first. The development of the county economy needs to consider how to keep the industry in the county, which is a closely linked and interlocking expression.
The county economy is very important for China's sustainable development. The lesson left to us by history is that "small chaos avoids the city, and major chaos avoids the countryside". To a large extent, the county economy and rural revitalization are the basis for coping with the challenges of globalization and our layout. Without these layouts, it is tantamount to exposing yourself completely unguarded to the main competitors.
The key to rural revitalization lies in people. Document No. 1 in 2024 clearly proposes to "strengthen the rural talent team", further emphasizing the importance of talents to rural revitalization. At present, women, children and the elderly are mainly left behind in rural areas, and it is particularly urgent to change the trend of one-way flow of rural population into cities, and realize the two-way flow of urban and rural population.
Since the 1990s, China has implemented a series of policies aimed at guiding peasants to move to cities, especially those measures that indirectly encourage peasants to buy houses in cities. For example, by concentrating educational resources in county towns, the commercialization and industrialization of the education market has been promoted, which has led to the gradual disappearance of "children and adolescents" in rural areas. Another example is the concentration of medical resources at least at the county level, which also prompts the "elderly" group to migrate to the city due to the need for medical treatment. These policies have led to the gradual loss of vitality in many villages, a process that does not evolve naturally, but is caused by human intervention and policy guidance, and objectively leads to the decay of rural areas.
Now, there are also a large number of urban people who want to go to the countryside. By the end of 2022, the number of entrepreneurs returning to their hometowns across the country had reached 12.2 million. But these people encountered all kinds of difficulties in the countryside:
First of all, there is no policy to give the same treatment to urban and rural hukou. Those who go to the city to work or live for more than half a year are counted as urban population; If you go to the countryside for more than half a year, is it considered a peasant population? Can you get the treatment of farmers when you go to the countryside?
* The policy says that the two factor markets in urban and rural areas should flow freely, but can I go to the countryside to achieve the possession of the factors? Can't even buy it. A large number of policies encourage farmers to move to the cities, but there are no policies to encourage citizens to go to the countryside.
When rural revitalization was introduced in 2017, a certain place set up "**20 Articles" and so on, calling on citizens to go to the countryside to promote the integration of urban and rural elements and two-way flow. But from 2017 to now, there has not been much repercussions.
In my opinion, it is mainly real estate and various capital forces that are at work: the rural population has moved away, so that capital can control the resources of the countryside, obtain the maximum resources with the lowest **, realize the transformation of resources into capital, and obtain the value-added income of resource capitalization.
We talk about rural revitalization, if people are gone, who will revitalize? Only farmers are the main body of rural revitalization. If the peasants are all asked to go to the city, how can they be the main peasants? At the same time, why are there people who oppose citizens going to the countryside? The main purpose is to set aside this resource for capital to possess. There are interests behind this.
For example, in 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the state and other nine departments will jointly issue the "My Hometown, My Construction" Activity Implementation Plan, encouraging and guiding retired cadres, retired teachers, retired doctors, retired technicians, retired soldiers, etc. to return to their hometowns to settle down, and be good industrial development instructors, village-level affairs supervisors, social conditions and public opinion information officers, and village construction think tanks.
However, even if only partially encouraged the "five retirees" to return to their hometowns, there was an immediate backlash against the fear that it could harm the interests of the peasants. But are such concerns really justified? How can we conclude that they are not able to work with farmers to innovate and promote the progress of the countryside without putting it into practice? If we only rely on the existing labor force in rural areas to promote rural revitalization, is the power too weak? These seemingly reasonable discussions may actually be motivated by the overprotection of the rural means of production. While these views may sound politically correct, there may be complex interests behind them, which have not yet been fully revealed.
The Economic Work Conference and the Rural Work Conference also proposed that in 2024, it is necessary to strengthen measures to increase farmers' income and implement actions to promote farmers' income increase.
However, we must recognize that there is no historical precedent for achieving prosperity through agriculture alone. In the United States, for example, the agricultural population in the United States is not farmers but farmers, and the farmers who work in the fields are migrant workers from countries such as Mexico, but they are not counted in the agricultural population of the United States. Therefore, we cannot simply apply the American model to the Chinese situation.
So, how do you make farmers rich? The real integration of the three industries is the key. In smallholder societies in East Asia, through integrated agricultural cooperatives, farmers are able to participate in the value-added benefits of the secondary and tertiary industries, resulting in per capita incomes for farmers exceeding those of urban dwellers. This is a model that is worthy of our in-depth study and reference.
For example, Japan's comprehensive agricultural cooperatives are a comprehensive organizational system that integrates various industries, including primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Nearly 99% of Japanese farmers have chosen to join the integrated agricultural cooperatives because they can enjoy the financial and tax incentives provided by the state through this system. These preferential policies are communicated and implemented through a unified system of integrated agricultural cooperatives, so farmers are willing to join.
Once a member of the comprehensive agricultural cooperative, farmers can enjoy tax exemption at financial institutions below the county level, and 51% of the financial income will be returned to farmers. In addition, the general agricultural cooperatives are also responsible for insurance, supermarkets, tourism, and other businesses, and the profits generated from these businesses are also returned to farmers. This integrated business model has enabled Japanese farmers to earn more per capita than urban residents.
However, in our country, these sectoral interests have been seized by the capitalist group. For example, a considerable amount of agricultural inputs and policy preferences have been used to support the expansion of capital groups and the entrapment of resources. In some places, the elimination of peasant farming has encouraged capital groups to build buildings to raise pigs, which not only suppresses the path of farmers' three-dimensional circular agriculture to get rich, but also destroys the natural environment and ecological balance of the countryside.
In addition, farmers' development opportunities in the tertiary sector are also restricted. At most, they can only open a low-income business such as farmhouses, but this is not a real tertiary business mode, and they cannot really give full play to the advantages and potential of farmers.
When farmers are not allowed to enter high-yield fields, their organizational capacity cannot be fully utilized.
Now the policy proposes "three changes reform" to re-develop a new type of collective economy, but how many have really done it? In the end, the profits were given to those external capital. Cadres in some localities also frankly said that they found that many cooperatives were fake and were only trying to defraud the state of subsidies.
Therefore, we need to take more scientific and rational measures to promote the coordinated development of urban and rural areas and make farmers rich.
In short, in order to promote the rural revitalization strategy, China should not only pay attention to the issue of agricultural development, which is known as the primary industry, but also pay more attention to how to make use of the spatial and ecological resources of the countryside and maximize its comparative advantages of "ecological industrialization and industrial ecology", so as to make the vast number of farmers rich. We believe that not only should we consciously protect the multi-occupation and diversification of traditional farmers, but also effectively eliminate environmental pollution due to agricultural cultural heritage such as "planting and breeding" and "intercropping". Moreover, due to the diversification of the rural economy in history, the rural society has absorbed a large number of skilled craftsmen to become a labor reservoir, which is conducive to long-term social stability.