1
Last Friday, after a torrential rain, a sudden rainbow hung in the clouds, and some friends who worked in Xixian New Area took photos and sent circles of friends, I joked:
This rainbow in Xixian New Area belongs to Xi'an and is managed by Xi'an City.
On this day, documents on the comprehensive custody of Xixian New Area by Xi'an City have been issued and widely circulated, that is, the so-called "comprehensive authorization, leaving no gaps", and only a few corner areas are under the responsibility of Xianyang City. Of course, it is a joke that the rainbow is in charge of Xi'an, but at this time it is worth quoting a passage from genesis to add interest to it - behold, I hang the bow (rainbow) on the clouds, as a sign of my covenant with the earth, and whenever I spread the clouds in the sky and see the rainbow showing the clouds, I will remember my vows with you and with all living beings.
In recent days, the document has been published in the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission's government-people interaction column, and some articles have also been reported from the perspective that the Xixian New Area will be divided into "directly administered areas" and "condominiums". In fact, putting aside the concept, the so-called "direct management area" is fully managed by Xi'an City, and the so-called "public management area", that is, managed by Xianyang, only involves three or four street offices in the corner area of Xixian New Area. Since then, the juxtaposition of Xi'an-Xixian New Area-Xianyang has become history.
In the spring of 10 years ago, I came to the "Shaanxi Unified Construction Office Building" in the northern suburbs of Xi'an - there is a building next to it that seems to raise ostriches, and I don't remember it accurately - the Shaanxi Unified Construction Office is subordinate to the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Office of the Shaanxi Provincial Construction Committee for promoting the Construction of Xixian New Area (hereinafter referred to as the Xixian Office) was set up in the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission, where the responsibility at that time was the coordination function of "municipal development and provincial coordination".
At that time, the Xixian New Area Management Committee had not yet been established, and the relevant management system mechanisms between provinces and cities were still a mystery, because I had spoiled the relevant policy trends in previous articles, so I was invited to communicate with the comrades who were preparing for the Xixian New Area Management Committee, mainly from the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission.
Hu Shi said that there are ghosts in mahjong. However, what is more "ghosted against the wall" than mahjong is the wheel of history. It is funny to say that 10 years ago, my articles mainly refuted the rumor that the Xixian New Area would be managed by Xi'an City, and at the same time proposed that the relevant institutional trend would be that Shaanxi Province would abolish the Xixian Office and establish an entity of the Xixian New Area Management Committee, which would be under the management of Shaanxi Province, that is, the institutional structure in the following 10 years.
After just 10 years, it has gone around and the foreknowledge has become a thing of the past.
The master storyteller Lian Kuo has a small book called "Discussion on the Rivers and Lakes", which is written about the various routines of the street jianghu people, fortune tellers, selling fake drugs, changing tricks, bodyguards selling art, and all kinds of things. Fortune tellers can judge their lives when they open their mouths, often because he can observe the color of words and understand people's feelings, such as "asking children will be childless". The so-called spoilers are called pre-knowledge. The reason why I refuted all kinds of "rumors" 10 years ago was because I knew the reason - the original idea of establishing the Xixian New Area was born 11 years ago in the consensus of a train carriage to a certain county in northern Shaanxi, so there was this "rumor", but with the personnel adjustment of the people in the carriage in 2010, the policy shift became inevitable.
In June 2011, the State Council New Office held a press conference to publicize the planning and institutional structure of xixian new area: under the premise of unchanged administrative divisions, the office of the construction management committee of the xixian new area that had been coordinated in the past was changed to the management committee of the xixian new area, which was directly managed by the Shaanxi provincial government. It is also clear that Xixian New Area has the administrative management authority of provincial-level departments such as economic management and planning, land, construction, and environmental protection, and the provincial leaders in charge (then standing committee member of the provincial party committee and executive deputy provincial Jiang Zelin) concurrently serve as the director, and Wang Jun serves as the deputy secretary and executive deputy director of the party working committee of the management committee.
At that time, Xixian New Area was one of the few new areas in China with provincial-level departmental management authority, and its structure was similar to that of Pudong, Binhai and other new areas, and this appearance was naturally expected. The intense preparations have finally come to an end, the mystery of the relevant system has also been unveiled, and after the press conference, the photo of Wang Jun stretching his waist was captured by the reporters on the spot, with a natural state of relaxation and pride that has been determined. He himself liked the picture. However, after the debut, what is the next step? He said --
"Great and big".
2
Immediately after, the concept of "Greater Xi'an" gradually surfaced.
According to the official expression of the Shaanxi Provincial Government, Greater Xi'an includes Xi'an City, Xianyang City and Xixian New Area. These are three juxtapositions. This statement is somewhat strange, because as a development zone, Xixian New Area does not have its own independent administrative area, and its planning scope is all located in Xi'an and Xianyang cities.
In January 2014, the State Council issued National Letter (2014) No. 2 document, officially approving Xixian New Area to become a state-level new area. At that time, the cities of Xi'an and Xianyang reacted calmly. At about the same time, Xi'an planned to set up the Weibei Industrial Zone to the northeast, with three management committees under its jurisdiction, and Xianyang planned to set up the Beiyuan New City to the northwest.
Provincial authority, national new district, everything looks good. Song Li, deputy director of the Economic Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, told me at that time that for the plan of greater Xi'an and Xixian New Area, Shaanxi must look at the problem from the perspective of the national strategy and consider what the country needs. See what Shaanxi can do? In turn, we will seek a response from the central government.
Ideal fullness, realistic bone feeling. At the practical operational level, the micro-power operation of Xixian New Area does not come from Guo Han (2014) No. 2, but from two other documents: Circular No. 12 and Circular No. 46.
Circular No. 12 refers to the "Reply on the Establishment of the Development and Construction Management Committee of the Xixian New Area in Shaanxi Province" approved by the Shaanxi Provincial Office, which clarifies that the Management Committee of the Xixian New Area has the economic management authority of the provincial departments and the administrative management authority of planning, land, construction, environmental protection and so on.
Circular No. 46 refers to the "Several Policies on Accelerating the Development of Xixian New Area" issued by the Shaanxi Provincial Government, which further clarifies that the Xixian New Area Management Committee is an agency dispatched by the Provincial People's Government to exercise the management power related to the development and construction of xixian New Area on behalf of the Shaanxi Provincial People's Government.
However, in China's local government administrative system, the authority of provincial-level departments is usually relatively macro and does not involve direct approval procedures for matters related to regional development and construction. For example, in hierarchical government affairs, the authority of planning rights and construction rights belongs to the municipal government, and the issuance of planning permits, construction permits, real estate certificates and other licenses is in the municipal department.
For the development of the new district is a land issue that is crucial, the reserve, transaction and land acquisition rights are in the district and county governments, and the land certificate is issued by the municipal department, and the more specific and direct land acquisition affairs usually need to be completed by the streets and townships.
This means that without further administrative trusteeship and no micro-level execution, a large number of provincial-level authorities in Xixian New Area are difficult to truly land. The active cooperation between the two cities of Xi'an and Xianyang is of course a possibility that looks good, but this possibility has very few possibilities at the practical level.
Why is the likelihood of actively cooperating and doing big together low? On the surface, cooperation between regions will bring greater value to both sides, which is a game of "making the cake bigger" rather than a zero-sum game. But this rarely appears at the practical level, peking university professor Zhou Lian once built a model to explain the long-standing problem of difficult cooperation between administrative entities in China .
Under the political promotion game, in the case of the spillover effect of the behavior of local officials on the neighboring region, the basic feature of the political promotion game is to prompt participants to only care about their own relative position with competitors. Where cost permits, participants are incentivized not only to do things that are good for the region's economic development, but also to do things that are detrimental to their competitors' regions. Those who are selfish and disadvantageous are most incentivized, and those who are both self-interested and beneficial are less motivated.
By quoting Zhou Li'an's theory, I wrote an article that explained the state of "running around" in Xi'an, Xianyang and Xixian New Areas. Jiang Zelin once asked his subordinates to circulate this article, but it is clear that finding a problem does not mean that it can be solved, and for several years in a row, when I communicated with friends in Xixian New Area, "running-in" was a topic that plagued all kinds of work.
Discussions about the adjustment of administrative divisions have gradually become lively, but those are just noisy. One official (whose name is almost well known to the people of Xi'an, who people call him "Lao Duan") half-jokingly proposed an interesting solution in private, he said—
"Let the number one in Xi'an concurrently serve as the number one in Xianyang, as long as one person can solve the problem."
Admittedly, this idea is wild but to the point. In particular, it is placed under the theoretical framework of Zhou Lian, which makes people admire his intuition.
3
During the "juxtaposition" period of Xi'an City, Xianyang City and Xixian New Area, I remember that there was a set of very interesting data, and in early 2016, Shaanxi published a set of environmental protection data: the number of blue skies in 2015, 251 days in Xi'an City, 258 days in Xianyang City, and 130 days in Xixian New Area sandwiched between the two cities.
This set of data obviously breaks through the common sense of reality, and if it is true, I can't think of a reasonable explanation. But what if it's true?
Subsequently, the Shaanxi Provincial Government approved the Xixian New Area to carry out administrative trusteeship of a large number of areas within the planning scope, involving dozens of townships in Xi'an and Xianyang. In this way, the problem of development and construction execution has been partially solved, and the problem of "running-in" can also be put aside for the time being.
Whether it is for cities or development zones, land finance is always a main line. People and things, money and things, the flow of light and shadow from scene to scene, all depend on the bearing of the land and the realization of value. In the second half of 2016, the land boom gradually activated the so-called urban values. Previously, the administrative trusteeship of Xixian New Area also laid the groundwork for the overall custody of Xi'an.
On the evening of January 22, 2017, Mao Wanchun, deputy secretary of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, Liang Gui, member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee and executive vice governor, Wang Yongkang, member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee and secretary of the Xi'an Municipal Party Committee, and Shangguan Jiqing, mayor of Xi'an, collectively announced in Xianyang that Xi'an would take charge of the Xixian New Area. The "juxtaposition" period of Xi'an City, Xianyang City and Xixian New Area is gradually coming to an end.
I learned of this decision a month ago, and on the afternoon of December 20, 2016, I sent a circle of friends saying, "Witnessed a historic moment in Xi'an in the past century", that is to say. The reason why I was able to know in advance was because I participated in the writing of an analysis of the primacy of Xi'an City, which impressed the highest decision-making level in Shaanxi Province at that time, and made them feel that it was imminent to truly do "Greater Xi'an", otherwise, they would not have an advantage in the competition of the national central city.
The phrase "a historic moment" now seems a bit vanity, and it may be exaggerated. I remember reading Qian Muyou said:
Historical events are often extremely difficult to understand at the time, but they are easily seen later. An old era has passed, and a new era has arrived. But was that new era an era of initiation or an era of transition? This is what we long to know, but it is not easy to know for a while. For example, architecture, although it is vertical and horizontal rubble, no cover, no side, but it may be beautiful, such as travel, crossing the middle river, tapping and shouting, singing high, it is not a momentary Yaxing, but the future is vast, the place of tax driving, is not here.
■ Map of Shaanxi in the Qing Dynasty
Qian Mu said that the transition is by no means a closed situation, and it cannot be made often; pioneering is not urgent, and we have to be patient, we have to endure, we have to stick to it, and we have to work hard. In other words, the transition is an unsustainable situation that requires us to find another way. Pioneering is an indispensable situation, and we must continue to work hard.
Today, from "escrow" to "full custody", the transitional era has temporarily ended. Recalling the changes in the System of Western And Xian in the past ten years, a piece of paper and a document implicates personnel one scene after another, making people feel mixed. Today, a little retrospective will enable the reader to understand the various frontiers and review the gains and losses.
During this period, we often see all kinds of words dazzling and eye-catching, although it makes people excited for a while, but in the end it is not beneficial to people. Three years ago, when I was riding a shared bicycle, I saw a page of advertising paper in the basket of the car, and its cover title was: "World-class Greater Xi'an", subtitled: "The provincial party secretary drew a line in Greater Xi'an and decided to make it world-class." This is the headline article that a certain city record once made a name for itself.
The advertising page opens to see, but the text is an advertisement of a certain andrology department.
Author | Meat Guru | Chastity author