Three thousand Shanghainese poured into the small fishing villages of Zhejiang, Wen Tiejun: they are an important force for common prosperity

Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Yu Siyi

"Every garlic is grown by our own hands." Open the Douyin APP to find the keyword "helping farmers", you will see a lot of short videos to help farmers or live streaming in the field with goods, most of the protagonists are young people.

With the development of the Internet and the prevalence of live broadcasting, in the past two years, many small-town youth who have worked hard in big cities have returned to their hometowns.

On October 19, on the sidelines of attending the first general conference of the Boao Forum for Asia Global Economic Development and Security Forum, Wen Tiejun, a well-known expert on "three rural areas" and a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainable Development of Chinese Min University, pointed out in an exclusive interview with Times Finance that in recent years, a large number of urban entrepreneurs have moved to the countryside, especially young people.

In Wen Tiejun's view, on the one hand, the rural water, road, gas, broadband and other infrastructure are in place, so that the countryside has a foundation for entrepreneurship. On the other hand, at present, the central government's expenditure on the "three rural areas" accounts for more than 50% of the total expenditure, and the peasants have obtained "supranational treatment", and returning to their hometowns is attractive to young people.

In May this year, the central government clearly entrusted Zhejiang with the important task of building a common prosperity demonstration zone for high-quality development, and some rural areas in Zhejiang were also set as "observation points for common prosperity demonstration areas". Wen Tiejun observed that Anji County in Zhejiang Province attracts many Shanghainese, which is a microcosm of the large number of urban people who have begun to move to the countryside.

Wen Tiejun said that from the perspective of strategic transformation, China is currently transforming from the previous stage of industrialization + urbanization to a new stage of ecological civilization.

He proposed that rural people working in the cities could create GDP. "If you turn to another idea, what about GEP? (GEP, the gross value of ecosystem production, the sum of the values of various final material goods and services that ecosystems provide for human well-being and sustainable economic and social development), then the urban-rural relationship may be very different. "

Wen Tiejun, an expert of "three rural areas" and a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainable Development of Chinese Min University

<h5>"Supranational treatment" attracts young people to return to their hometowns to start their own businesses</h5>

Small-town youth returning to their hometowns to start a business is becoming a trend, and more and more young people are leaving the north, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to return to their hometowns: some people start businesses to do e-commerce, some people do group buying leaders, and some people do express delivery services in townships.

They help agriculture realize digitalization and accelerate the sales of agricultural products through means such as helping farmers, discounting promotions, live streaming with goods, and supporting industrial belts. According to statistics, in 2019, before the outbreak of the epidemic, the network sales of agricultural products in more than 800 poverty-stricken counties across the country reached 19.08 billion yuan.

Wen Tiejun called this phenomenon the "New Rural Movement", and he mentioned that not only farmers have returned to their hometowns, but many citizens have also gone to the countryside to start businesses. He introduced that the major adjustment of urban-rural relations began in 2005, when the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" put forward a new rural construction strategy, the state issued a major policy of comprehensive exemption from agricultural taxes, and the rural capital construction and social security expenditures were paid by the central government.

It is reported that in the 15 years since the completion of the tax exemption in 2006, the state has invested a lot of money in the rural grassroots, so that 99% of the village and town levels have completed the capital construction work of the "five links" into the villages. "Water, roads, gas, broadband, etc. have all been built in the village, and even to the household." Wen Tiejun said that the "five links" are the standard for running development zones along the coast, which means that rural areas already have the basic conditions for starting a business.

In addition, Wen Tiejun said that the peasants' medical, educational, and social security expenditures are coordinated by the central government, accounting for 36% of the country's total population and more than 50% of the central finance, and the peasants receive "supranational treatment."

In his view, although the treatment of ordinary farmers cannot be compared with that of citizens in first-tier cities, the treatment of citizens in provinces like Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang may not be as good as that of farmers in developed areas, coupled with the implementation of shareholding system reform in many places, so that farmers have property income for a long time.

"Like Nanhai Village in Guangdong, the rural collective economic income is several billion yuan a year, and dividends can be distributed." Wen Tiejun laughed and said that this is why many people who have settled in cities and towns want to return to the countryside and find their rural hukou, because they want to find the basis for property income.

In addition to infrastructure and financial support, rural areas have an unmatched ecological environment in the city, which is also an important reason for the return of young people in small towns.

"Over the years, a lot of big infectious diseases have happened from cities. Most of the rural areas are still roads that are not picked up and closed at night. The incidence of criminal cases is extremely low, and the safety factor is extremely high, which is not enjoyed by urban people. Wen Tiejun said that from the perspective of ecological environment, social security and other aspects, in fact, the overall conditions in rural areas are better than in cities, so more and more urban people are willing to go to the countryside.

<h5>Deepen reform and formulate a new strategy for the integration of urban and rural areas</h5>

In fact, as early as 2008, Wen Tiejun wrote an article calling for the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization to lead to a widening gap between peasant incomes and urban incomes. "In order to preserve food security and the status of rural areas as strategic industries in the process of industrialization, small-scale peasant economy countries must give farmers an income level that is at least at or even higher than the average social income. The central authorities should intensify policy adjustments and give supra-national treatment to grain farmers. ”

Nowadays, with the development of the economy, the gap between urban and rural incomes has been further narrowed.

The research report of the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "Rural Green Paper: Analysis and Forecast of China's Rural Economic Situation (2020-2021)", pointed out that in 2020, the per capita disposable income of farmers will grow faster than that of urban residents, and the per capita disposable income of farmers will increase by 6.9% over the previous year, 3.4 percentage points faster than that of urban residents; the actual per capita disposable income of farmers calculated at the price of the previous year will increase by 3.8%, 2.6 percentage points faster than that of urban residents.

Li Guoxiang, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, once pointed out in an interview with the media that in 2020, the relative gap between urban and rural residents not only continued to narrow, but also for the first time since urban and rural residents established a unified disposable income survey and accounting framework in 2013. In 2020, the absolute gap between the per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents was 26,703 yuan, a decrease of 365 yuan over the previous year.

In Wen Tiejun's view, this is the result of the integration of urban and rural areas. Wen Tiejun said that in 2017, the "Nineteenth National Congress" determined the strategy of rural revitalization and clearly took the integration of urban and rural areas as a new guiding ideology.

Wen Tiejun told Times Finance that taking Zhejiang as an example, the most famous sentence of Zhejiang people now is that "raising pigs and chickens is not as good as raising Shanghainese."

It is reported that there is a famous fishing village in Anji County, Zhejiang Province, with less than a thousand people in the village, but there are three thousand people from Shanghai, and more than 100 of them are foreigners from Shanghai. Wen Tiejun said that these new phenomena show that China's urban-rural relations are undergoing a very important transformation: a large number of urban population is beginning to move to the countryside, which is very different from the past emphasis on rural people moving to the city.

Wen Tiejun believes that "the consumption capacity of Shanghai people for natural resources and environment is far better than others, and they are an important force for the common prosperity of Zhejiang." ”

"Zhejiang people can lease the right to use the house for 40 years from outsiders. Elsewhere, I have not heard of this policy. Wen Tiejun further pointed out that this is very valuable.

"At present, many rural policies cannot meet the needs of urban people going to the countryside, so at present, deepening reform and more towards the new strategy of urban-rural integration can adapt to the new situation." Wen Tiejun concluded.

<h5>Examine the development of spatial ecological resources</h5>

Wen Tiejun also mentioned capital and financial investment in the countryside. He said that although investment in the countryside is not as good as in the city, the infrastructure has met the needs of the countryside's own development. From the perspective of China's strategic transformation, the entire society is transforming from the previous stage of industrialization + urbanization to the new stage of ecological civilization.

After research and statistics, Wen Tiejun got a set of data, the country has experienced more than 20 years of capital construction investment, has formed 1300 trillion yuan of facility assets, of which more than 200 trillion yuan are in the countryside. He pointed out that the very important bottleneck in rural development is the lack of heavy asset investment. In this transformation, the most important thing is how to combine the facility assets formed by the capital construction that have been invested with the development of spatial ecological resources to form a new development connotation.

Wen Tiejun mentioned that the integration of urban and rural areas in Europe is relatively good, there are not so many large cities, and more economies are not concentrated in cities, which is a relatively moderate way of social development.

He mentioned that if urbanization accounts for 64% of the country according to official statistics, "now it is the peasants who are employed in the cities, and it is GDP." If you turn to a different idea, what about GEP? ”

GEP, the gross value of ecosystem production, is the sum of the values of various final material goods and services provided by ecosystems for human well-being and sustainable economic and social development. Wen Tiejun believes that if GEP is counted, then the current urban-rural relationship may have different ideas.

Not long ago, on October 14, the Information Office of the State Council held a press conference on the progress of the first anniversary of the implementation of the Shenzhen Comprehensive Reform Pilot, and the National Development and Reform Commission believed that "Shenzhen took the lead in establishing a complete gross ecosystem (GEP) accounting system".

On October 22, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment, the Bureau of Statistics, and the Development and Reform Commission jointly released the results of the 2020 Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) accounting results of Shenzhen. The accounting results show that Shenzhen's GEP in 2020 is 130.382 billion yuan, while Shenzhen's GDP in 2020 is 2.77 trillion yuan.