With the promulgation of the "Implementation Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the Household Registration System" in Beijing, the household registration reform programs in 31 provinces across the country have all been completed. In these household reform schemes, agricultural registered permanent residence was explicitly cancelled, which indicates that agricultural registered permanent residence, which contains multiple emotions and connotations, has officially withdrawn from the historical stage. Will the cancellation of agricultural registered permanent residence affect farmers’ rights and interests? What impact will it have on the new urbanization construction?
Farmers’ rights and interests are not affected.
In the Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the Household Registration System issued by the State Council in 2014, it was proposed that "a unified household registration system should be established in urban and rural areas, and the distinction between agricultural registered permanent residence and non-agricultural registered permanent residence and the blue-printed household registration derived from it should be abolished, and unified registration should be made as a resident household registration."
Since 1958, China has divided agricultural registered permanent residence and non-agricultural registered permanent residence, resulting in different rights, guarantees and treatment. Agricultural registered permanent residence’s rights and interests are mainly collective land contracting rights, rural homestead use rights and collective income distribution rights, while non-agricultural registered permanent residence’s rights and interests are mainly social public services attached to household registration, including education, medical care, employment, insurance, housing and so on.
According to experts’ analysis, the cancellation of agricultural registered permanent residence does not mean that all agricultural registered permanent residence will be transformed into non-agricultural registered permanent residence, but registered as a resident’s account, which will lay a foundation for gradually opening up the dual gap between urban and rural areas and realizing the equalization of public services in social security, education and medical care. Therefore, the actual rights and interests of farmers will not change.
"After the identity of farmers and urban residents is unified, there is no distinction between agricultural registered permanent residence and non-agricultural registered permanent residence, only geographical differences." Zhou Yunqing, a professor of sociology at Wuhan University, said that at present, the basic medical insurance for urban and rural residents is being merged one after another, and in the future, residents all over the country are expected to enjoy equal status and treatment.
With the advancement of urbanization, public services such as urban education and housing security in many areas have also been opened to rural migrant workers and their children. According to the data released by the National Development and Reform Commission, in 2015, there were 13.671 million children of migrant workers in the compulsory education stage, and the proportion of them enrolled in public schools reached 80%. In addition to compulsory education, Sichuan, Chongqing, Zhejiang and other places have included migrant workers in the public rental housing security system.
The equalization of urban and rural public services has accelerated.
The Plan for Promoting 100 million Non-registered Population to Settle in Cities issued by the General Office of the State Council clearly stipulates that the conditions for settling in agricultural transfer population should be relaxed in an all-round way except for a few mega-cities. Focusing on the population of rural students entering cities and towns for further studies and joining the army, the agricultural transfer population who have lived in cities and towns for more than five years and migrated with their families, and the new generation of migrant workers, we will promote the agricultural transfer population who have the ability to work and live stably in cities and towns to settle down with their families in cities and towns.
In 2015, Xiangyang City, Hubei Province, located in Jianghan Plain, fully liberalized the restrictions on household registration. As long as rural residents rent legal private housing for urban residents and have stable employment, they, their spouses, fathers and minor children can all settle in Xiangyang City. At the same time, it is clear that farmers should not withdraw from the right to contracted management of land, the right to use homestead and the right to distribute collective income as preconditions when they settle down in urban areas.
Zhao Di is the sales manager of a machinery enterprise in Xiangyang City, Hubei Province. In June 2015, after Xiangyang City implemented the "zero threshold" for urban settlement, he was able to move his household registration from his hometown in Henan to Xiangyang City. "When the hukou is in the countryside, it is very inconvenient for children to go to school in Xiangyang. When they participate in some bidding to check their ID cards, they are even considered as impersonations. Now these problems are solved."
The reporters interviewed in many places for half a month found that most small and medium-sized towns have liberalized the threshold for settlement, encouraging rural residents to settle in cities, so as to improve the urbanization rate of registered population. According to the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", the urbanization rate of China’s permanent population needs to increase by 3.9 percentage points in the next five years, and the urbanization rate of registered population needs to increase by 5.1 percentage points. In the future, it will be more convenient for agricultural population to move into cities and settle down.
Dong Xiaowei, deputy director of the comprehensive pilot office of new urbanization in Langzhong City, Sichuan Province, made a detailed comparison between agricultural registered permanent residence and non-agricultural registered permanent residence: among the 12 rights associated with hukou, there are basically no policy differences between urban and rural areas, such as employment, pension insurance, education, basic public health services and public cultural services; Land rights and interests, direct grain subsidies, returning farmland to forests, rural five guarantees and poverty alleviation are unique to rural hukou; Only low-income cities have a higher monthly subsidy standard than rural areas, 40 yuan, and public rental housing and low-rent housing are unique to urban hukou.
Dong Xiaowei said: "In recent years, preferential policies attached to agricultural registered permanent residence have been continuously introduced, which greatly increased the attractiveness of agricultural registered permanent residence. Some farmers are willing to work and live in the city, but they are unwilling to move their accounts, which is a rational choice after calculating an interest account. "
Three trends of "anti-urbanization"
Under the "one drop and one liter" of gold content in urban hukou and rural hukou, rural residents who used to prefer to spend money to "turn agriculture into non-agriculture" and eat "national grain" are now less willing to settle in cities year by year.
A sample survey in Yicheng City, Hubei Province shows that 70% of local farmers are willing to move to cities, but they are unwilling to move into hukou. Huoqiu County, Anhui Province is one of the pilot counties to promote new urbanization. According to the data provided by Huoqiu County Public Security Bureau, in 2015, only 273 people moved into Chengguan Town in agricultural registered permanent residence, Huoqiu County. At present, there are still 1.5 million people in agricultural registered permanent residence.
In some places, the phenomenon of "reverse urbanization" has gradually appeared.
— — I was admitted to the university, but I didn’t move my hukou. Rural students in many places no longer move their registered permanent residence to cities after being admitted to universities. According to the data provided by the Public Security Bureau of Langzhong City, only 21 rural college students moved their household registration to the cities where they studied in 2015, mainly to big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Wei Li, deputy head of the Public Security Brigade of the Public Security Bureau of Langzhong City, said that at present, rural college students are expected to settle in big cities unless they are admitted to key universities, and generally do not move out of rural areas.
— — Buy a house, work and live in the city, but don’t move your account. Many small and medium-sized cities have zero threshold for settlement, and a considerable number of rural hukou personnel who have lived in cities all the year round have fully met the conditions for settlement in cities, but they still leave their hukou in rural areas.
In September, 2015, Huoqiu County issued a policy, which stipulated that anyone who bought a new commercial house with a size of less than 144 square meters for the first time in the county planning area would be given a housing subsidy of 200 yuan per square meter, and rural registered residents could voluntarily choose to transfer their household registration. Yao Zebao, a 25-year-old villager in Linhuaigang Township, Huoqiu County, told reporters that he worked in Shanghai and went back to Huoqiu County to buy a house for the convenience of his children going to primary school in the county. "My income is limited, it is impossible to settle in Shanghai, and I will return to Huoqiu in the future. However, I am not going to move my hukou to the county, and it is better to stay in the rural policy. "
— — Many people with urban hukou want to move their hukou back to the countryside. Wei Li said that although the current policy prohibits urban hukou from moving to rural areas, almost every day people call to ask how to change urban hukou into rural hukou.
Bian Zisheng, a resident of Huoqiu County, said: "I used to be a rural hukou. In 1992, my parents spent 4,000 yuan to buy me a town hukou, so that I could go to school in the city. At that time, the rural hukou could not go to schools in the county. Now I regret it, there is neither contracted land nor homestead. "
Urbanization cannot be a "digital article"
During the half-month talk, reporters found in many places that many places have set expected goals for the urbanization rate of registered population, and some places have started "digital articles" to complete the target tasks.
After canceling the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural hukou, some cities counted all the population in urban areas divided by civil affairs as urban registered population, thus, a large number of farmers in urban villages and suburban villages were "urbanized". The heads of new urbanization functional departments in some areas said that by withdrawing counties and setting up districts, a large number of rural population in the suburbs are all counted as urban registered population, so as to ensure that the urbanization rate index is completed on schedule.
In some places, land expropriation has become a means to complete the urbanization rate of the population. In a city in the west, the reporter found that in 2016, the city’s farmers settled in the city with a target of 56,000 people. When asked whether the set goal can be achieved, the person in charge of the comprehensive pilot office of new urbanization in the city said: "It can certainly be achieved. In a city as big as ours, there are tens of thousands of people if we casually engage in land acquisition."
Li Quanjun, deputy director of the Development Planning Department of Anhui Development and Reform Commission, believes that the registered population can no longer fully reflect the real urbanization rate of a place. In the process of accelerating new urbanization, we should respect the laws of economic and social development and avoid the phenomenon of forcibly promoting urbanization.
To truly promote the urbanization of people, in addition to strengthening the absorption function of cities, we should also revitalize rural land assets and "untie" farmers and land. In recent years, farmers’ "three rights" of land contractual management right, homestead use right and collective income distribution right have been strengthened, but the property value of farmers’ assets cannot be realized because the key institutional obstacles have not been fundamentally eliminated, which weakens farmers’ ability to bring capital into the city, which also "binds" farmers and land tightly.
After the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the central government gradually began to promote the "separation of three powers" in rural land reform: implementing collective ownership, stabilizing farmers’ contracting rights, and releasing land management rights. On October 30 this year, the central government also issued the Opinions on Improving the Separation of Rural Land Ownership, Contracting Rights and Management Rights to further improve the rural land property rights system.
Some places actively explore ways to revitalize rural land property rights and let farmers bring capital into cities. Using the mechanism of linking the increase and decrease of urban and rural construction land, Chongqing has implemented the "land ticket" system, guiding farmers to voluntarily reclaim idle and abandoned rural construction land into cultivated land. After ensuring the development of rural areas, the formed indicators will be publicly traded in the market in the form of "land ticket". Yicheng City, Hubei Province is constantly exploring the exit mechanism of rural homestead. On the premise of confirming the right and determining the normal use area in the early stage, based on the principle of farmers’ voluntary participation, hundreds of households have voluntarily withdrawn from the area occupied by farmers. (Written by reporters: Qin Dui, Xu Haitao, Xu Ru, Li Jinfeng)
