Times have changed: the stock game is heating up, and the province is beginning to "grab" farmers
It is hoped that this policy can be continuously improved and iterated, so that fewer children are left behind and more farmers can be supported for the elderly.
Author: Jinren
The data of the permanent population of each province in 2022 shows that Guangdong is still the most populous province in terms of total volume; In terms of increments, Zhejiang topped the list.
At the end of 2022, the permanent population of Zhejiang Province was 65.77 million, an increase of 370,000 compared with the permanent population of 65.4 million at the end of 2021.
In 2022, the number of births and deaths in Zhejiang Province will be 412,000, and the natural increase population will be 03,000. It can be seen that Zhejiang's population growth is mainly due to the inflow of population.
Everyone is boasting about Zhejiang people having money and building a common prosperity area, but Zhejiang people are thinking about danger in times of peace, always thinking about how to do things better.
In this context, we see that Zhejiang is constantly "amplifying moves".
The official website of the Zhejiang Provincial Government recently released the "Zhejiang Province Promotes the Implementation of the System of Providing Basic Public Services in Permanent Residences and Orderly Promotes the Urbanization of Agricultural Migrant Population" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Plan"), which clarifies the two tasks of further smoothing the integration of agricultural migrant population into cities, including relaxing the conditions for agricultural migrant population to settle down, and improving the new residence permit system.
01 Migrant workers delay the aging process
What exactly does the Implementation Plan say? This is what we care about.
In fact, it is just one sentence: farmers with conditions and willingness are welcome to become citizens of most cities in Zhejiang, including migrant workers who have worked in Zhejiang for many years.
Many people interpret this move as merely "robbing people" or as "stabilizing real estate".
My opinion: It is not just as simple as "robbing people" or selling houses, but "retaining people" and serving people, which is tantamount to exploring the way for urban reform.
In fact, the relaxation of restrictions on urban settlement did not start in Zhejiang, Shandong and Jiangxi have long had similar measures, but some places have not really implemented them.
In the 1st group of the Baopu Financial Readers Club, I asked a friend, you have announced the relevant measures there, can you settle down independently? He said no.
Compared with Shandong and Jiangxi, Zhejiang is more interesting because Zhejiang has famous cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and Shaoxing.
▲Wenzhou night view
However, the whole province of Zhejiang has completely abolished the settlement restriction policy, except for Hangzhou urban area.
Hangzhou Municipality will further improve the policy of points settlement, ensure that the number of years of social security payment and the number of years of continuous residence account for the main proportion, and gradually abolish the annual settlement quota limit.
Taking Ningbo as an example, its per capita GDP has exceeded most provincial capitals and even some first-tier cities, for a long time, Zhejiang's governance level is relatively high, cultural development is more prosperous, and there are more job opportunities, so if people from other provinces working in Zhejiang have the opportunity to become citizens of some cities in Zhejiang, and the threshold is not high, it is still attractive.
▲Ningbo
What's more, the decision-making level had already decided on the "Opinions on Supporting Zhejiang's High-quality Development and Building a Common Prosperity Demonstration Zone" in May 2021.
All sectors of society are waiting for Zhejiang to solve the problem - how to build a common prosperity area.
Returning to reality, we cannot hide that Zhejiang also has its own practical difficulties.
The first is that Zhejiang has an area of only 105,500 square kilometers, which is one of the smallest among the provinces in the country.
Zhejiang's terrain is known as "seven mountains, two waters and one field", and the flat land in the province accounts for only a little more than 20% of the total area, about 23,000 square kilometers (including plains, terraces and basins). These lands are more suitable for modern forms of living, and the vast majority of the province's population is also settled here.
The density of Zhejiang Province's population of 65.77 million based on the area of flat land should be a more accurate calculation method, resulting in a population density of about 2,800 people per square kilometer, which is already relatively high in the comparison of domestic provinces.
But the flip side of high population density is that aging is getting worse.
According to data from the Zhejiang Bureau of Statistics, in 2020, the population aged 60 and above in the province reached 12.0727 million, accounting for 18.70% of the total population of the province, of which 8.5663 million people aged 65 and above, accounting for 13.27% of the total population of the province.
Compared with 2010, the total population of the province increased by 18.63% in ten years, while the population aged 60 and above increased by 59.72%, of which the population aged 65 and above increased by 68.40%, and the growth rate of the elderly population was much higher than the growth rate of the total population.
The aging of the population has led to an increasing old-age dependency ratio. According to the population aged 60 and above as the elderly population and the 16-59 years old as the working-age population, the total dependency ratio in Zhejiang Province in 2020 was 49.24%, of which the children's dependency ratio was 21.33%, and the old-age dependency ratio was 27.90%; If the population aged 65 and above is the elderly population and the population aged 15-64 is the working age population, the total dependency ratio in Zhejiang Province in 2020 will be 36.45%, and the old-age dependency ratio will be 18.10%, which is almost the same as the child dependency ratio.
Zhejiang is old, this is a fact, of course, all the provinces in the country are actually in this process.
But this "old" in Zhejiang does not stand out in the national ranking:
In 2020, among the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government, Zhejiang Province ranked 17th after Liaoning (17.42), Chongqing (17.08), Sichuan (16.93), Shanghai (16.28), Jiangsu (16.20), Jilin (15.61), Heilongjiang (15.61) and Shandong (15.13), ranking 17th in the country, slightly 0.23 percentage points lower than the national average of 13.50%.
▲Source: China Business Industry Research Institute
What is Zhejiang's "secret weapon"?
In 2020, the number of permanent residents outside Zhejiang reached 16.1865 million, accounting for 25.07% of the province's permanent population.
The inflow population outside the province is not only large, but the age structure is relatively young, and the out-of-province population, mainly migrant workers, is still in the flow characteristics of "entering the city when young and returning to the hometown after middle age", which has slowed down the aging of the population in Zhejiang Province.
Therefore, Zhejiang very welcome migrant workers who have long-term jobs in the province, because they can work, bring consumption power, and they directly delay the aging process in Zhejiang, which is of great significance.
Of course, it is not that Zhejiang does not welcome white-collar workers and college students, Zhejiang has previously introduced many policies to attract national talents.
For example, Hangzhou has implemented a special project for young talents, and introduced support policies and activities such as rental subsidies, living subsidies, and entrepreneurship subsidies for fresh college students. According to statistics, since 2020, Hangzhou has introduced more than 1.3 million new college students under the age of 35. (CCTV Finance)
02 Increase urbanization rate to cope with contraction
Zhejiang's idea is very clear - to serve the farmers in the province well, and at the same time "grab" migrant workers from other provinces who have jobs in Zhejiang.
This is an escalation of urban competition and a white-hot stock game, which is a good thing for relevant personnel.
Zhejiang's urbanization rate in 2022 is 73.4%, and it hopes to reach 76% in 2027.
▲Night view of Qiantang River
Why do you want to do this? Quite simply, the population is relatively concentrated, and the investment of public service facilities, personnel, and funds can exert greater effectiveness.
On March 31, 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Key Tasks for New-type Urbanization Construction in 2019", which mentioned "shrinking cities" for the first time and clearly required shrinking small and medium-sized cities to lose weight and strengthen their bodies, strictly control increments, and revitalize stocks.
The research team of Zhang Xueliang, member of the China Regional Economy 50 Forum and executive director of the Yangtze River Delta and Yangtze River Economic Belt Development Research Institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, analyzed the sample of administrative division changes in 2865 counties, cities (districts) and found that 26.71% of administrative units at the prefecture level and above and 37.16% of counties, cities (districts) in China contracted to varying degrees.
Zhejiang's Taizhou and Yiwu are also among the shrinking cities.
▲Taizhou Seaside Port
Zhejiang's increase in permanent population last year was the largest in China, but the natural increase in population was only 03,000, and Zhejiang's population growth was mainly attributed to the inflow of population.
Zhejiang has taken precautions to actively increase the urbanization rate while the permanent population continues to increase, first encouraging farmers in Zhejiang Province to move to the city, and also to prepare for possible future contraction.
The ultimate goal is to concentrate the population and use every penny to the maximum effect, that is, as stated in the Implementation Plan - "fuller employment, more stable housing, better education, more convenient medical care, stronger security, and richer culture".
As for selling houses and selling more houses, I am afraid that the relevant parties have become normal, of course, it is good to be able to sell some, and there is no way to sell them, which is not the main purpose.
If it is simply to sell a house, in fact, the biggest "big killer" is to liberalize Hangzhou's settlement policy, that is, as long as you have a job in Hangzhou, you can settle in Hangzhou when you buy a house, but Zhejiang is not currently doing this.
▲Hangzhou
One of the solutions to how to solve the housing problem when peasants move to the cities is to improve the housing security system with public rental housing, affordable rental housing and co-ownership housing as the main body. Of course, it also "supports the market-oriented way to meet the housing needs of the rural migrant population".
It can be seen that selling a house is at least not the main purpose or one of the results.
03 The fate of thousands of people has been reversed
Why should Zhejiang attract more migrant workers working in the province to stay and integrate into Zhejiang's cities?
Are they not a "burden", the fact is: the world has changed, Zhejiang has changed.
For a long time, migrant workers have been contributors to the city and have not been able to share in the city's welfare and convenience, which was the norm in the past, and even the migrant workers themselves were accustomed to it.
Zhejiang took the initiative to attract migrant workers to stay and become Zhejiang people, although mainly for economic considerations, mainly to hedge the aging process of the province.
But objectively a win-win-win situation has been formed:
If migrant workers from other provinces already have jobs in Zhejiang, what does it mean for a farmer to rely on the "household registration system of regular residence" and further realize the inter-provincial transfer of families through the "legal and stable residence (including lease) settlement and the relocation of immediate family members such as spouses"?
Please imagine: a farmer in Henan works in a factory on the outskirts of Ningbo, earning thousands a month, occasionally tens of thousands, and his wife also works in a factory, they become Ningbo citizens through policies, and then they can obtain affordable housing or long-term rental housing through relevant policies, and their children have become Ningbo people for generations, which is definitely a huge change in the fate of the family.
Once things like this happen in Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Jiaxing...
What this means for thousands, tens of thousands of families, is definitely a reversal of the fate of thousands of people!
Not only has Zhejiang's population stabilized, but related factories and companies have less worry about the loss of skilled workers, and migrant families are of course also beneficiaries.
This change may seem microscopic, but it is the first wave of a huge wave of change that will dramatically change the status of farmers.
Once disliked, once old to return home, now different.
Because the peasants have become fragrant food, the peasants also need to rob, you are not rare, there is Zhejiang rare, you regard the peasants as a burden, but Zhejiang regards the peasants as ordinary citizens, and if it continues, of course, it is a huge wave of urban change.
The biggest beneficiary is still farmers, because the value is prominent, the provinces are vying, Zhejiang has a good start, follow or not?
I want to emphasize that only migrant workers from other provinces who have relatively stable jobs and relatively fixed residences in Zhejiang are likely to become citizens of some cities in Zhejiang, not to say that a peasant who has not contributed to Zhejiang can set out from the mainland tomorrow and settle down in Zhejiang the day after tomorrow.
Zhejiang did not say any empty words, stereotypes, nonsense, directly said that I want to help farmers do something, I want to work like this, just "further strengthen the public service guarantee of agricultural transfer population" listed six points:
Optimize employment and entrepreneurship services around fuller employment.
Focusing on more stable living, increase housing security.
Focusing on better education, protect the right of migrant children to education.
Focusing on making medical treatment more convenient, improve medical and health services.
Expand social security coverage around stronger protection.
Focusing on cultural enrichment, optimize public cultural services.
There are also two or three specific measures to further smooth the channels for the integration of agricultural migrants into cities, further improve the ability of agricultural migrants to fully integrate into cities, create digital applications with the urbanization of agricultural migrants as the core business, and strengthen organizational implementation and strengthen organizational implementation.
Do other provinces follow? In the same case, there is not only the pressure of capital and personnel investment, but also the consideration of social governance ability and execution.
If you don't follow, what does the future hold? The probability is that the resident population will continue to decline, and the rest will think for themselves.
Treating farmers well starts with "robbing farmers", Zhejiang has made a good start, and there are specific scientific and meticulous measures that can be steadily advanced.
The more such involvements, the better, the more such stock games, the better, and I hope that more farmers can get more benefits and benefits.
I hope that this policy can be continuously improved and iterated, so that fewer left-behind children and more farmers can provide for the elderly.
Beautiful Zhejiang, immeasurable merit.