Dang Guoying: The real node of rural development is in small cities, and land reform should also be further decentralized

Dang Guoying, a senior researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

In the process of promoting rural revitalization and the development of small towns, Dang Guoying believes that land reform should be further released, the peasants' contract land circulation mechanism should be further optimized, and the land contracting right should be further openly traded; the supply system can no longer be engaged in in residential land, and the mechanism must be changed.

Marlene/From Beijing

"The development of modern agriculture must be combined with the development of cities and towns, which is a characteristic of agricultural developed countries around the world." Dang Guoying, a senior researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

After years of promotion, China has made certain achievements in rural construction: grain production has continued to increase, the income ratio of urban and rural residents has been shrinking, and a pattern of coordinated urban and rural development is taking shape. However, in the meantime, some new issues are also worthy of attention.

In the view of Dang Guoying, these new issues have three main aspects, involving equality, efficiency and stability.

The first is the problem of efficiency. Dang Guoying believes that in order to achieve economic efficiency in rural areas, it is still necessary to take the road of "moderate-scale operation + deepening of social division of labor + socialized services", and small contract households must achieve historical transformation into a real non-agricultural population. But this is a difficult point, which will involve the problem of family transfer, the problem of small city development, and the problem of agricultural product cycle.

"After the scale of operation, will the peasants' income be raised?" This is not the case. Of course, if there is no scale of operation farmers lower income. Judging from the situation in developed countries such as the United States, the real income from land operation accounts for only about 1/5 of the proportion of peasants' income, which is a big problem. Why is it that after the rural areas have large-scale operations, the main income of farmers cannot be increased, and even the proportion is getting lower and lower? How to establish a mechanism is an efficiency dilemma. Dang Guoying said that in the United States, an agricultural powerhouse, for example, the proportion of agricultural production revenue in total income has dropped from about 50% in 1960 to about 15% at present; and the composition of farmers' incomes in Europe and Japan is also roughly the same; in the world, the main channel for farmers to increase income is more and more concentrated in the income of non-agricultural industries.

The second is the issue of equality. This includes the issue of accessibility to basic public services, i.e. how to make public services accessible to farmers in practice, as well as social security and a beautiful environment. How do the incomes of agricultural workers generally match the incomes of other populations, or even how is the former slightly higher than the latter?

The third is the problem of social governance. With the advancement of urbanization, the population of rural areas will be concentrated in the municipal area, and the real agricultural area residents are mainly agricultural families, who are small in number and scattered in small settlements, and some will set up settlements on their farms that integrate production and household. In this case, can the existing village committee system adapt to the new form of residence? Can social governance achieve urban-rural integration?

How can I improve these issues?

Dang Guoying believes that it is necessary to carry out the following aspects: First, we must respect the peasants' right to free choice; second, the target area for the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy should be semi-densely populated areas and agricultural areas including cities and towns; third, the balanced layout of cities and towns; fourth, the center of gravity of the agricultural industrial chain should sink; fifth, the development of modern professional cooperatives across administrative regions; sixth, social governance to achieve urban-rural integration; and seventh, deepen agricultural reform.

"The real node of rural development is in small cities, which is the foothold of agricultural and rural service talents, the bearing base of advanced culture, and a distribution center that integrates big and big things." Dang Guoying said that according to international experience, an agricultural and rural service center can be formed every 100-300 square kilometers, and there is a quality of public service in the city, so that professional farmers can reach this center by half an hour by car at most.

He believes that the construction of small cities should be of high quality, and the best public facilities in a county town should not be county government office buildings, but schools, hospitals, and libraries; and the layout should be balanced, covering 100 to 300 kilometers; the population should be scaled, at least more than 30,000 people, to meet the needs of economic and social development.

At the same time, Dang Guoying has also repeatedly stressed the need for a clear definition of the countryside when expressing his views on different occasions.

"In March this year, the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and other six major international institutions did a very important work to divide the world's population layout types, which is conducive to solving the problem of distinguishing between urban and rural areas for many years." Dang Guoying said.

This division divides the population into three categories: cities – areas with a population density greater than or equal to 1,500 people per square kilometre in a continuous area, a total population of more than 50,000 people, and at least half of the population in the central area fully covered by urban facilities; Areas outside the above two types of areas with a population density of less than 300.

"The regional distribution and boundaries of these 3 population layouts are not very clear in our country, but this layout concept is very important. Only by clarifying the population layout can we know the more specific work goals of promoting the rural revitalization strategy. Dang Guoying said that from the history of developed countries, the existence of towns and semi-densely populated areas is very important for the development of agricultural areas. In the cause of rural revitalization, the overall operation of this area and the agricultural area is conducive to solving many problems faced.

Dang Guoying hopes that there will be several changes in the countryside in the future: First, the rural population will still have to go out and transfer to small and medium-sized cities to achieve a balance between social governance and services; the real agricultural areas are only small peasant settlements; at that time, the landscape of the land will change. Second, the income of peasants is higher than the average income of urban people. Third, it is necessary to effectively improve the rural environment. Fourth, agriculture should provide high-quality and inexpensive agricultural products, so that Chinese have no problems in the safety and quality of eating.