This year's work report did not exceed the scope determined by the economic work conference at the end of last year, especially the judgment of the macro situation remained unchanged, and the work summary in 2023 and the work direction in 2024 were basically the same. This is particularly important. Yaqiu mentioned in the previous article when interpreting the ** economic work conference that the current decision-making is more dynamic and will change according to the changes in the actual situation. For example, at the ** Economic Work Conference at the end of 2022, the first of the five major tasks was to "focus on expanding domestic demand", but it changed in the actual work later, focusing more on the long-term main task, that is, the modern industrial system, and later the "new quality productivity". From the end of last year's economic work conference to today's official report of the two sessions, some things have also happened in more than 2 months, such as huge fluctuations in the capital market, but obviously these things have not affected the overall judgment of the first month, which means that the next will still be more inclined to the medium and long-term strategy. In today's report, Yaqiu is most concerned about"New urbanization".The report also mentions "organically combining the promotion of new urbanization with the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas", "deepening the reform of household registration", and "people-oriented". No matter what stage of development of any country, real estate is the top priority, and nearly half of the current economy of the United States is also supported by real estate. At present, China's economy is in a period of transition, and the real estate setback, the inertia of the past has been broken, and they all want to know the future direction of China's economy, and should find momentum from the first. And the reason why Yaqiu is concerned is also related to 10 years ago. Ten years ago, in 2012, the former prime minister was most optimistic about urbanization, according to Stiglitz, former vice president of the World Bank and Nobel laureate in economicsChina's urbanization and U.S. high technology are the two driving forces of the global economy in the 21st century。At that time, urbanization was extremely popular, and the popularity was higher than that of new energy and artificial intelligence now, but the direction was soon crooked, and it was used by real estate developers, so that housing prices, which had been stabilized through various restrictive policies, skyrocketed again. The biggest problem was that urbanization at that time regarded people as tools rather than goals, aiming at the economic growth brought about by the migration of farmers to the cities, and many farmers emptied their pockets to buy houses in the cities, but the problem wasA large number of peasants who have migrated to the cities do not enjoy the basic public services of the citizensBehind a household registration, there are arrears in education, medical care, pension, housing and other aspects. This is a challenge that late-developing countries like China have to face. In this case, farmers enter the city, and the small and medium-sized high-quality author list The urban population enters the big city, and the obstacles are much smaller, and there is no need to do much, and the free flow of the population will eventually promote the basic equality of per capita labor productivity across the country.
However, this is not the case in late-developing countries, where there is a large-scale migration of people to the cities, and the provision of public services in the cities is seriously insufficient, and in many countries there is an extremely serious problem of urban slums. 
China is in between, and it is impossible to equalize urban and rural services in the short term, but it is absolutely impossible to allow slums to appear in the cities, so it is necessary to impose certain restrictions on the urbanization of the population; before the peasants have completely taken root in the cities, they must not be in a hurry to cut off the peasants' way of retreat; the peasants' homesteads and land are basically retained, and they can still go home in the event of fluctuations, at least they will have food, work, and housing. Therefore, this wave of urbanization boom more than 10 years ago is also the first work to be corrected, originally rumored to be held at the end of 2012 to hold a first-level urbanization-related meeting, but in fact it was not held until the end of 2013, and the wind direction has also undergone a 180 change, clearly said".On the issue of population urbanization, we must have sufficient historical patienceIt is required that all localities cannot rely on administrative orders to increase the weight layer by layer and pull out the seedlings to help grow. With the 2013 urbanization work conference set the tone, this wave of urbanization boom basically cooled, and later, although there was also a round of real estate skyrocketing, but the urbanization progress was relatively flat, basically maintaining a growth rate of 1% in 1 year, from 53 in 201373% to 63 in 202089%, as well as 66 percent last year16%。However, there are pros and cons to any policy, and the emphasis on population urbanization requires historical patience to avoid the influx of large numbers of people into cities and towns in a short period of time, resulting in insufficient supply of urban public services, but there are also various restrictions, resulting in slow progress in the reform of the hukou system, and even new artificial discrimination in some places. For example, all localities will link household registration with house purchase, engage in a point system to settle down, and so on. Another example is the affordable housing provided in some places, which should be equally distributed, especially the low-income population, but the result is actually more biased towards people with a certain degree of education, and migrant workers have low education and income, and as a result, they are discriminated against in welfare housing. In some other places, the hukou reform is aimed at the peasants' land, and the peasants' hukou has been changed from agricultural to non-peasant overnight, and the land has been taken away, but the peasants who have lost their land have not received basic compensation such as social security, and have become barefoot and have gone to the city barefoot and only obtained one urban household registration. 
But the question is, what's the point of just the paper of household registration? What everyone really cares about is the education, medical care, pension and other public service resources represented by the urban household registration, the peasants are moving to the city, the cost of living has increased greatly, and they have nominally become citizens, but there is no pension and medical insurance enjoyed by the citizens, and even the land and homestead and other benefits of the rural household registration representatives are gone, and they are sandwiched in the middle. The key reason behind this is "who pays for the money". It is best to use at least a considerable part of the land income that has skyrocketed in various localities to supplement the peasants who have moved to the cities during the real estate dividend period. For example, it is regarded as paying endowment insurance and medical insurance, instead of basically using it to engage in urban infrastructure construction or other projects, and as a result, the biggest dividend of land finance is shared by the citizens who were originally in the city, and the vast number of farmers get too little, and even become the "pick-up man" of the soaring housing prices. After all, although the peasants have not received equal treatment, they have in fact generally moved to the cities, as can be seen from one data: according to the data of the Seven Census, China's urban permanent population is nearly 300 million more than the urban registered population, and China's urbanization rate is based on the urban permanent populationUrbanization rate of registered populationOnly 452%。This means that one-third of the city's permanent population is a de facto "second-class citizen" in terms of public services. The change appeared in 2022, the twentieth generation report proposed to "promote people-centered new urbanization and accelerate the urbanization of the agricultural transfer population", note that in 2013, it was said that "historical patience", in 2022, it was changed to "accelerate", and later "people-centered" was also clearly "people-oriented" at the executive meeting in December 2023. 
Emphasizing "people-oriented" is to learn the lessons of 10 years ago and clarify the essence of urbanization, not to stimulate the economy, but to serve people, and the focus is to make up for the arrears of farmers, especially migrant workers, and promote fairness. This is why today's ** report will put "new urbanization" and "comprehensive rural revitalization" together, mentioning "promoting the equal enjoyment of basic urban public services by permanent residents who have not settled down", which is also the concept of "urban-rural integrated development" and "county" that has been emphasized since 2017. It is aimed at the current nearly 300 million and the potential agricultural labor population of at least 200 million in the future, totaling at least 500 million people. Finding a way for these people to take root in the city and engage in non-agricultural industries is enough to solve the problem of labor shortage for a long time, and it will also bring a huge increase in consumption. Only when people enjoy better social security will the willingness to spend will be stronger. At present, the per capita GDP of Chinese is basically equivalent to the world average, but the consumption rate of residents is only 70% of the world average, and the Chinese population accounts for 17 of the world8%, and the proportion of household consumption expenditure is only 128%, a full 5 percentage point difference. The key is the arrears to the peasants and peasant workers.
Making up for the arrears is not only a requirement for common prosperity, but also a greater benefit to the economy. But frankly speaking, it is much more difficult to move forward now than it was 10 years ago, the real estate dividend has ended, land revenues are shrinking rapidly, and housing prices have risen, making it more difficult for farmers to take root in the cities. Still the same old question :Money from **? The lessons of the past 10 years have shown that it is difficult to rely on the market and local governments, and can only be driven by **. After all, the market is profit-oriented, and the local government is also very unmotivated, because of the high mobility of the population. The current budget system is not tied to the movement of peopleThe places where a large number of people have flowed into enjoy a rich demographic dividend, but the pension, medical care, education and other expenditures of these populations are borne by the areas where the population flows out, so the places where the population flows in, of course, have no incentive to pay social security to the farmers who flow in. In the past, when the land income was high, I was reluctant to do it, let alone now. But if it can't be solved, it won't be enough, but we must really break the dual structure of urban and rural areas and realize the two-way flow of urban and rural production factors, which is also the "promotion of two-way flow of various factors" said at the end of last year. For example, the reform of rural homesteads, at least in the counties and districts around big cities, can be done first. 
And this kind of reform can be said to be one of the most difficult, and it has not been well solved in the past few decades. Obviously, such reforms need to be carried out incrementally, otherwise it will be difficult to carry out. The simplest reason, how much resistance is there to let peasant children who already live in the city enjoy equal rights to go to school, high school entrance examination, and college entrance examination in the city where they live? It can be said that the citizens of every city who have settled down are vested interests. 
Push for the increment of reform in the **? On the eve of the two sessions, on February 28, the Prime Minister met with a delegation from the American Chamber of Commerce to China, and clearly described the four major drivers of China's economic growth:Advanced manufacturing, new urbanization, consumption structure upgrading, green and low-carbon transformation。This description is basically the same as the speech at the Davos Forum at the beginning of the year, and it is obvious that efforts will be made in these four aspects in the future. 
Interestingly, there is no mention of the digital economy, which may of course be internalized in several aspects as a basis. Last year, new urbanization was also focused on, such as the "three major projects":The construction of affordable housing, the construction of public infrastructure for both ordinary and emergency purposes, and the transformation of urban villages, which is what the city is going to do; In the countryside, large-scale public service construction is also being carried out, the focus of the first document in 2020 is to speed up the completion of rural infrastructure and public service shortcomings, the general secretary clearly pointed out that "the gap between urban and rural areas is the most intuitive infrastructure and public service gap, to focus on the construction of public infrastructure in rural areas, accelerate the promotion of public services to the countryside." In 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs publicly stated that at least 7 trillion yuan is needed to realize the five-year plan for rural revitalization. 
There are a lot of arrears in urbanization, and it is not yet known how much arrears can be made up for in this round of new urbanization and how many deep-seated reforms can be promoted, but we have to find a way to get through.