Dialogue expert| Wei Xuanli, member of the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and researcher of the Institute of Rural Economy of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences: Promote the integration of urban and rural areas

Wei Xuanli, member of the Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and researcher of the Institute of Rural Economy of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences:

Promote the integration of urban and rural areas

Reporter: In terms of improving the quality of new urbanization construction, this year's government work report proposes to actively integrate into the world-class urban agglomeration with the capital as the core. From the perspective of building and growing a new layout, what do you think this deployment means?

Wei Xuanli: An urban agglomeration refers to a city group that, within a specific geographical range, takes more than 1 megacity as the core, consists of at least 3 or more large cities as a unit, and relies on a developed infrastructure network such as transportation and communications to form a compact spatial organization and close economic ties, and ultimately achieves a high degree of urbanization and high integration.

As the core of the regional economy, the city is the spatial carrier of regional economic activities and the carrier and node of regional economic organizations. Under the background of the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the integration of Hebei into the world-class urban agglomeration with the capital as the core will undoubtedly play a huge driving role in many cities in Hebei.

Of course, there is still a big gap between the overall scale and economic volume of cities in Hebei Province and Beijing, the first city in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei world-class city cluster, and the promotion and support capacity of cities to the regional economy are insufficient. But Hebei is trying to move forward. According to the latest overall land and spatial planning of Hebei Province, it is proposed to build a "11379" urban system, that is, to build 1 new district, 1 megacity, 3 type I large cities, 7 type II large cities and 9 medium-sized cities.

The government work report also mentioned that it is necessary to promote the coordinated development of large, medium, and small cities and towns. This is still worth looking forward to.

Reporter: In the past few years, Hebei has made certain achievements in improving the quality of the city. In what areas do we need to make up for the shortcomings in the future?

Wei Xuanli: I have noticed that the government work report mentions "the implementation of urban renewal actions". In recent years, Hebei has continued to carry out a series of infrastructure transformation and construction for old residential areas, shantytown transformation, drinking water, drainage and so on, which has improved the living conditions of urban residents to a certain extent. Urban renewal actions will help to further accelerate the improvement and improvement of urban functions.

Urban renewal needs to give more prominence to the concept of ecological civilization, which is a high degree of coordination and unity of production, life and ecology, and urban development should have cultural precipitation, and remember homesickness in the development of the city. It is necessary to pay attention to the shaping of urban culture, dig deep into the history of the city, and create the characteristic business cards of different cities.

Reporter: The government work report has also made arrangements for promoting the quality improvement and upgrading of county towns, and has also put forward arrangements for the economic development of counties.

Wei Xuanli: In 2021, Hebei issued the "Three-year Action Implementation Plan for Improving the Quality and Upgrading of County Construction in Hebei Province (2021-2023)", and after one year of making up for shortcomings, all counties in the province have different degrees of quality improvement.

The model demonstration county has a good foundation and will have better experience to share; quality improvement counties to check and fill in the gaps, and accelerating the integration of industry and city is the key; the foundation strengthening county has more debts in history and needs to continue to work hard to make up for shortcomings.

In general, different counties should be tailored to local conditions, targeted, and gradually.

Reporter: The report also puts forward relevant arrangements for promoting the integration of urban and rural development, what are your expectations for this?

Wei Xuanli: The integration of urban and rural areas is the convergence point between the development of new urbanization and rural revitalization.

The integration of urban and rural development is first of all the integration of infrastructure and public services, it is necessary to accelerate the integration of transportation, water supply, power supply and other infrastructure planning, construction and management, accelerate education, medical culture and inclusive sharing; secondly, accelerate the two-way flow of urban and rural elements such as talents, funds, and information, the core of which is people, and it is necessary to achieve breakthroughs in the urbanization mechanism of agricultural transfer population and the incentive mechanism for urban talents to enter the countryside; the third is industrial integration, and the integration of urban and rural industries is fundamental. Only through industrial integration can we realize the transformation and upgrading of urban and rural industrial structure, the interconnection and interaction of urban and rural space, and the two-way exchange of urban and rural elements.

Text/Hebei Daily reporter Baiyun