IV Thought of Advancing China’s New Urban-Rural Integration during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period

A Urbanization in Humanity Context

Fundamentally, new urbanization concerns mostly about people. In terms of humanity urbanization, whether in metropolitans or small towns, the overall planning of urban and rural areas is of vital importance. The urbanization and rural development should be placed in “one game of chess” to avoid the urbanization to strike rural development or deviate from it. It is important to speed up the “integration” paces in urban and rural planning, industrial layout, infrastructure, public services, social security for employment, and social management, with a view to promote balanced allocation of public resources between urban and rural areas and equal exchange of development factors between urban and rural areas, as well as to achieve the benign interaction and common prosperity between the urban and rural areas.

Urban and rural areas are not opposite to each other in themselves. Rural population is neither necessarily to enter the cities nor to keep in line with the urban development, but to follow-up the industrial development. Because there are industries in the cities, this part of the population was taken into the cities. China’s industrialization has gone through 20 years and now faces with great structural changes and adjustment. With the advent of such adjustment, the demand for land and population, especially for involved industrial workers, is also changing.

B Urban-Rural Integration: Industrial Integration between Urban and Rural Areas

In the past 20 years, the rural population has become smaller, but not all the farmers have entered the urban areas. Among those who have stayed in rural areas, a large number of them have transferred from primary to tertiary industry and have engaged in service industry in rural areas or for small and medium-sized cities. A part of the industries went from the city into the countryside, narrowing the distance between rural and urban areas, but this is only a part of the market. The government should invest more in rural areas to support their development. In the future, most of the industries might be considerably based in rural areas or small towns. Farmers not only do the jobs of primary industry but also engage in the jobs of tertiary industry in rural areas and small cities. Considering that the problems of dual structure in urban-rural economy have not been resolved, farmers have spontaneously adopted such way. If urbanization can solve the needs of human development, namely, people in rural areas can also develop something that really supports urban industrial system, it is verified to be the right orientation.

It is imperative to accelerate the transformation of agricultural production, to encourage large-scale operation, as well as to further improve the efficiency of agricultural production and farmers’ income through scaled production ways of family farm and cooperatives plus peasant households. It is necessary to explore and promote the reform of property rights system of rural collective economic organizations, to encourage and instruct the collective assets to focus on the street-town first-level platform, and to improve revenue distribution mechanism through clarifying rights and shares, thus having farmers become aware of the benefits of the collective “cake”. It is important to improve the supporting policies and measures for land transfer, to guarantee the employment of transforming rural labor, and to establish a mechanism for farmers’ income to go on a long-term and stable rise by means of multi-pronged approaches.

C Fostering Rural Market and Establishing Specialized Rural Market System

The urbanization has stimulated the vitality of the rural market and resulted in the unprecedented prosperity of it. Under the influence of urbanization, the traditional concept for famers to value production but ignore marketing

Urban-Rural Integration 173 has been changed, and their enthusiasm and conscientiousness of caring and supporting the establishment and cultivation of the market is inspiring. Traditional farmers have become the new market players in rural market and have started to envisage the market, learn more about it, and actively participate in it. In addition, the development of agriculture prospers the rural market, which synchronizes the development of characteristic agriculture and rural economy. In this way, a rural system with “combination of small, medium and large markets, combination of wholesale and retail markets and combination of comprehensive and specialized markets” is established. In other words, the rural market system involves both the open big markets— with high standards, large scales, wide ranges, and full functions—and the small market places—with small scales and availability for local practice. Besides, the development of agricultural leading enterprises also promotes the prosperity of rural markets. The agricultural products processing enterprises and the rural markets supplement each other for mutual development, namely, there are active rural markets in the radiation range of each leading enterprise, and agricultural products processing enterprises around each rural market. Through such mode of “enterprise + market + farmer”, both enterprises and markets grow, thus increasing the income of farmers.

We should give full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation. In the future new urbanization, we should pay more attention to the role of market, fully apply the laws of market, and make decisions on the new urbanization on such basis.

D Constructing Moderate Concentrated Rural Infrastructure Network with Joint of Lines and Dots

Scientific Planning and Rational Layout of Rural Communities

It is an important prerequisite to improve new rural construction and achieve urban-rural integration. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, along with the rapid development of modern agriculture, the new rural planning in rural areas was developing from simple to zero to sophisticated, from pushing and dominating of the government to continuous participation of farmers and communities, thus increasingly rationalizing the planning and layout of rural.

Upon close combination of tourism and cultural industry, on the basis of the development of modern agriculture, rural communities were proposed higher requirements for their functions, thus accordingly demanding more scientific nature and reasonability of planning of villages and towns.

Increase Construction of Rural Transportation Network

The development of characteristic agriculture leads to higher requirements for the rapid turnover and circulation of agricultural products and processed finished products. The countryside tourism driven bycharacteristic agriculture also demands more convenient transportation for rural areas. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the improvement of rural road network was an important part for characteristic agriculture development and rural urbanization, as convenient communication and transportation conditions propel agriculture development and rural urbanization.

Build Comprehensive Rural Infrastructure System

The degree of completion of rural infrastructure determines the degree of sustainable development of rural industries and urbanization of rural areas. Only by seizing the key link of rural infrastructure can we provide the solid material foundation for the development of characteristic agriculture and s to ensure the stable construction of new socialist countryside. The local governments of Beijing, Hangzhou, and other cities attach great importance to both the development of characteristic agriculture and the enhancement of infrastructure construction in rural areas. In these cities, fiscal and credit funds are comprehensively utilized in construction of convenient rural transportation system, public transportation system, and electric power communication facilities.

Our tasks in the future shall include to intensify the “five projects of infrastructure for the new rural areas” and the initiatives of “to make rural areas light up, farmers warm up and agricultural resources cycle up”; to promote the use of clean energy, renewable energy, and energy-saving products; to gradually improve the construction of rural public service information system by establishing mechanism of managing and protecting expenditure collection and investment in infrastructure construction.

Promote Modernization of Farmers' Production and Lifestyle

The urban-rural integration has made the countryside burst into vigor by bringing benefits to agriculture and increasing income of farmers.