"In recent years, there has actually been a new 'going to the mountains and going to the countryside' movement, and a large number of urban entrepreneurs have moved to the countryside." On October 20, Wen Tiejun, a well-known expert on the "three rural areas" issue and a professor at Chinese Min University, said at the first session of the Boao Forum for Asia "Global Economic Development and Security Forum" sub-forum "The Future of Communities: Common Development of Cities and Villages".
Wen Tiejun
Wen Tiejun introduced that the major adjustment of China's urban-rural relations began in 2005, when the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" proposed to build a new socialist countryside and actively promote the overall development of urban and rural areas. In 2006, China completely abolished agricultural taxes and included the expenditure on infrastructure and social security in agriculture and rural areas into the central government's financial payments. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017 for the first time proposed the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy and clearly coordinated urban and rural development.
"Since the comprehensive abolition of agricultural taxes, China has carried out rural capital construction work for 15 consecutive years and invested a lot of money in the rural grassroots," Wen Tiejun said, and now 99% of the country's villages and towns have completed the "five links" of electricity, water, gas, roads, and broadband, and most rural areas already have the basic conditions for starting a business.
"In recent years, there has actually been a new 'going to the mountains and going to the countryside' movement, and a large number of urban entrepreneurs have moved to the countryside, especially young people." For example, Wen Tiejun said that there is a very famous fishing village in Anji County, Zhejiang Province, with less than a thousand people in the village and 3,000 people from Shanghai, of which more than 100 are foreigners from Shanghai.
Wen Tiejun believes that the above-mentioned phenomena that have appeared in many places are very worthy of attention. These new phenomena show that the relationship between urban and rural areas in China today is undergoing an important shift in the migration of a large number of urban population to the countryside, which is very different from the emphasis on rural people going to the city in the past.
Wen Tiejun said that the current policy needs to be further adjusted to meet the new needs of urban people going to the countryside. "At present, 'deep reform' (deepening reform) is more towards the new strategy of urban-rural integration, so as to adapt to the new situation."
Red Star News reporters Zhang Yanliang and Wang Hongqiang reported from Changsha, Hunan Province
Edited by Tan Wangyu
(Download Red Star News, there are prizes for the newspaper!) ）
