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The focus of work at all levels of government

It is not about focusing on the percentage change in the quantitative indicator of urbanization rate.

Rather, it is to effectively implement the key tasks in the citizenization action

Since the publication and implementation of the "National New Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)" in 2014, urbanization has become a common consensus that it is the only way to modernization, an important way to solve the "three rural issues", a strong support for promoting regional coordinated development, and an important means to expand domestic demand and promote industrial upgrading. Recently, the "Five-Year Action Plan for Deeply Implementing the People-Oriented New Urbanization Strategy" (hereinafter referred to as the "Five-Year Action Plan") was released, proposing that after five years of efforts, "the urbanization rate of permanent population will be increased to nearly 70%." This indicator has once again sparked heated discussions, and whether to "drive people into the city" has become a hot topic of concern for the public. In fact, this is a huge misunderstanding.

As early as December 12, 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out in his speech at the Central Urbanization Work Conference that "urbanization is constrained by natural conditions, the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, and the level of economic and social development. It must be adapted to local conditions and reasonably planned. We must not treat increasing the urbanization rate in a statistical sense as a hard task, nor rely on administrative orders to increase the burden at all levels and conduct assessments at all levels. We must not be impatient for quick results, force things to happen, or engage in a great leap forward, work hard and fast, or rush into things."

This passage profoundly reveals that the economic indicator of urbanization rate is an objective result of the combined effects of multiple factors such as industrialization (currently non-agricultural industrialization), economic development, social change and political orientation. China's urbanization rate will be close to 70% in 2029, or roughly stabilize at around 75% when modernization is basically achieved by 2035. This is a prospective judgment, not a hard task target.

my country is a country with a large population. Each region is at a different stage of development, with great differences in natural endowment, industrial base and human geography. In 2023, the urbanization rates of the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions will be 72.6%, 71.7%, 59.9% and 69.3% respectively. In the past decade, they have increased by 9.7, 13.3, 13.8 and 8.4 percentage points respectively. As for the three most developed major strategic regions of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, they will take on the role of regional economic and social demonstration and radiation. The urbanization rates in 2023 will be 70.6%, 72.8% and 87.5% (nine cities in the Pearl River Delta), which are much higher than the national average.

The expected national urbanization rate indicator must be combined with regional indicators to better reflect the structure of China's urban-rural relations, the level of economic development, the distribution and migration of the population in the national territory and between urban and rural areas. It also indirectly reflects the population quality, human capital level, urban and rural factor input and flow, industrial structure evolution and productivity development level. The regional laws of the urbanization process should become an important reference indicator for differentiated policy making.

Urbanization is usually associated with higher income levels and productivity. The infrastructure construction, real estate development, industrial upgrading and service industry expansion in this process can also create a large amount of investment and consumption demand, thereby promoting economic growth. The large number of non-agricultural industry employment opportunities created can also absorb the surplus rural labor force to achieve employment transfer, thereby bringing about an improvement in lifestyle, cultural quality and social rights. This is what we often call the urbanization process.

As the high-quality urbanization process continues to advance, on the one hand, the economic strength, economic benefits, and innovation momentum stimulated by population agglomeration in China's main urban functional zones will be further enhanced; on the other hand, the per capita resource ownership in agricultural main functional zones and ecological main functional zones will also be enlarged, providing more abundant human-land relationship conditions and more flexible policy operation space for the process of agricultural modernization and ecological protection and conservation.

The focus of the Five-Year Action Plan is not on the expected judgment of "70%". Even if this expectation can be achieved, it only involves the transfer of 56 million people from rural to urban areas. One of the focuses of the document is a new round of urbanization of agricultural migrant population.

According to statistics in 2023, there are 297 million migrant workers in China. The document lists six key tasks, focusing on this huge group of people who have basically achieved employment transfer, and the problem of not achieving complete urbanization or high-quality urbanization. We expect that every one percentage point increase in the urbanization rate can drive trillions of new investment demand, and the premise of adding hundreds of billions of consumption demand is the quality of urbanization, including a more open household registration system, more stable urban employment, more sound public services, a higher level of education rights in the inflow area, greater social security coverage, and a more diversified housing security system for new citizens and young people.

This is the "hard task" that needs to be done. We must truly solve the problem of nearly 300 million people being able to enter the city, stay there, live a better life, and eventually integrate into China's modernization process, and realize the strategic goal of human modernization. Therefore, the focus of the work of governments at all levels is not to focus on the percentage changes in the quantitative indicators of urbanization rate, but to effectively implement the key tasks in the urbanization action. The former is an expected result, and the latter is the "hard task" that is likely to achieve the expected judgment.

(The author is the executive vice president of the China New Urbanization Research Institute of Tsinghua University)

Author: Yin Zhi