Source: Caijing

Yang Weimin said that a number of systems such as household registration, land and housing have hindered urbanization, and the purpose of promoting a new type of urbanization is to break and reform these obstacles, such as speeding up the citizenization of agricultural population transfer. allow urbanites to buy the right to use homestead in rural areas, simplify administrative levels and set up more cities.

Urbanization is a natural development trend of modern society, but there are many institutional obstacles to urbanization because of the existence of household registration system, land system and various differential policies attached to it. Therefore, the central government has proposed to promote a new type of urbanization, which is to break down these obstacles through reform.

Yang Weimin, deputy director of the Economic Committee of the CPPCC National Committee, made the above remarks at the third China New urbanization Theory and Policy practice Forum on November 16. The forum was held by the China New urbanization Research Institute of Tsinghua University.

As the former deputy director of the Central Finance Office, Yang Weimin has always been regarded as the central economic policy think tank. This time, Yang Weimin directly pointed out various problems in the formulation of public policies on urbanization by governments at all levels.

Many systems hinder the process of urbanization

From the preliminary study of the 10th five-year Plan, the Planning Department of the National Development and Reform Commission began to study the issue of urbanization and put forward "implementing a positive urbanization strategy to promote the sustained and rapid growth of the national economy" until October 11, 2000. in the "proposal on the formulation of the Tenth five-year Plan for National Economic and Social Development" adopted by the Fifth Plenary session of the 15th CPC Central Committee, the word "urbanization" appeared for the first time and formally put forward the urbanization strategy.

In Yang Weimin's view, since the implementation of the urbanization strategy of the 10th five-year Plan, the urbanization rate of household registered population in 2017 is only 42.35%, and there is no substantial progress in human urbanization.

At present, people from all walks of life have reached a consensus on the reform line determined by the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, and the bulletin of the plenary session has made a systematic statement on improving the system and mechanism for the healthy development of urbanization. however, five years have passed. How are the reforms at all levels of government?

Yang Weimin pointed out, "Generally speaking, there are still many obstacles to the implementation of the reform. Many measures are still hanging in the air and have not landed. "He believes that many existing systems have hindered the process of urbanization, including household registration system, land system, public service system, housing system and so on.

"to promote urbanization is to eliminate various systems that hinder urbanization through reform," Yang Weimin further explained. In fact, governments at all levels, including relevant departments, did not focus on reform in the process of promoting urbanization. Some places regard the promotion of urbanization as a means of economic growth, which has become planning, building new towns and new areas, attracting investment to engage in real estate projects, and so on. "the premise of people's urbanization has been forgotten and the reform has been discarded."

Six reforms to break down the obstacles to urbanization

Yang Weimin believes that in the next step to promote urbanization, there are several reforms that need to be deepened and started.

The first is to speed up the citizenization of agricultural transfer population.The central government has set the goal of settling down 100 million people in the city by 2020, which, in Yang Weimin's view, "is likely to be difficult to achieve at the current pace." Therefore, "all relevant departments and local governments at all levels should earnestly implement the reform of the household registration system in accordance with the clear requirements put forward by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the central urbanization work conference, and not selectively."

Yang Weimin believes that white-collar and blue-collar workers, college students and migrant workers should be treated equally when they settle down, just like state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. The relevant departments should inspect the points registration system in some areas that do not comply with the principle of fairness and order them to be revised.

Due to institutional reasons, many farmers go home when they go to work in cities in their 40s, and more than 20 years of working time are wasted. Yang Weimin believes that to expand the labor supply, it is not necessary to increase the labor force population, but to increase the farmers' lifetime working time. In this way, it can not only alleviate the difficulty of employment, but also reduce the pressure of labor costs and social security costs, and enhance the vitality of enterprises.

"the income of 20 years of work is definitely different from that of 40 years. Only in this way can we expand the total scale of consumption, help to improve the labor productivity of the whole society, and prolong the stage of rapid growth in China's economy." Yang Weimin pointed out.

The second reform is to restart the housing system reform.Cities are inseparable from farmers, and most farmers will not return to rural areas, so we should speed up the establishment of a housing system of multi-subject supply, multi-channel security, rent and purchase, so as to solve the housing problem of new citizens entering the city.

In combination with the reform of the housing provident fund system, various localities should pay close attention to the establishment of housing policy-oriented financial institutions, which can solve many disadvantages of the provident fund system and provide financial support for prospective home buyers. At the same time, the most important thing to solve the problem of the same right of rent and purchase is that buyers and tenants and renters enjoy equal public services, and to change the hukou can only fall on the households of the property owners and it is difficult to fall on the rental housing.

The third reform is to establish a unified urban and rural construction land market.Rural collective land reform has been piloted in 33 counties and cities. Yang Weimin also pointed out that while affirming the existing achievements, we can liberate our minds a little further, without changing the collective ownership of rural construction land. Through the reform of the property right system of separating ownership and use rights, we can solve the problem of market segmentation of urban and rural construction land, and achieve the same entry into the market as state-owned land, the same right and the same price. Finally realize the unification of urban and rural construction land market.

Yang Weimin also believes that at present, there are 30 million mu of vacant homestead in rural areas, equivalent to 37% of all urban built-up areas, and more than the total amount of residential land in the city. Therefore, taking out a small part of the rural vacant homestead into urban residential land can greatly reduce the land price, and farmers should be given full usufruct to the homestead, which can be leased, transferred, mortgaged and inherited.

"people who settle in rural areas are allowed to sell the right to use the homestead nationwide, and his income can be used for the initial funds for buying houses in the city, while allowing urban people to go to the countryside to buy the right to use their homestead." Yang Weimin pointed out.

The fourth reform is to establish a transparent and standardized investment and financing mechanism for urban construction. The first is to allow local governments to broaden the channels of urban construction financing by issuing bonds and other ways. The second is to let social capital participate in urban infrastructure investment and operation through franchising and other ways.

However, at present, the bond issuance target is still determined from the top down, and the local government does not have the right to decide the scale of bond issuance according to its own needs and financial resources, which is the institutional soil for the substantial increase of local government hidden debt. In response, Yang Weimin pointed out, "the city government should be given the autonomy to issue legal debt, and the task of the higher departments is to regulate, make the bond issuance behavior more transparent, and let the market determine the risk and return of urban debt."

In view of the widespread phenomenon of preferring state-owned enterprises to private enterprises in current PPP projects, Yang Weimin said, "if state-owned capital is invested in areas that private capital can also do, it will inevitably have a crowding-out effect and squeeze the space for private investment." Yang Weimin pointed out that instead of working with state-owned enterprises to promise them higher returns than lending rates, it would be better to give local governments more debt targets.

The fifth reform is to build an urban pattern with urban agglomeration as the main body and the coordinated development of large, small and medium-sized cities and towns. The formation of urban agglomeration involves many institutional reforms."how to achieve planning integration? How to break the regional blockade, realize market integration and equalize the policy of attracting investment? How to realize the free circulation and market allocation of population funds, land and scientific research achievements within the urban agglomeration? How to realize transportation integration and networking? "

Yang Weimin pointed out that at present, in order to coordinate inter-city coordination, some temporary institutions have been set up, which lack authority, and it is difficult to effectively solve the problems in the coordinated development of urban agglomeration.

The sixth is to simplify the administrative level and reform the establishment mode of the formed city.China's current administrative system has been gradually formed since 1983, and there are many problems, such as many management levels, heavy financial burden, low administrative efficiency and so on. "in principle, we should not change the whole territory into cities, counties into cities, counties into districts, and we should change the administrative settings as soon as possible." At the same time, for the established town with a huge population, Shihang Town is transformed into a city, "it is not enough for China to have more than 1.3 billion cities with a population of 1.3 billion." Yang Weimin said.