The county seat is an important part of my country's urban system and an important support for the integrated development of urban and rural areas.
County construction is an important engine for my country to expand domestic demand and an important guarantee for a better life for the people.
As of the end of 2021, my country's urban permanent population is 910 million, and the urbanization rate of the permanent population in 2021 has reached 64.72%.
In May this year, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting Urbanization with County Towns as an Important Carrier" (hereinafter referred to as "Opinions").
Regarding the introduction of the "Opinions", experts generally believe that this marks that my country's urbanization construction has entered the second half.
During this period, the high-quality development of urban economy and urbanization and the coordination of urban-rural relations will become the focus of work.
So, how should we make the county economy bigger and stronger, build a new type of urbanization, and build a new type of industrial-peasant-urban-rural relationship?
On this issue, Beijing Think Tank interviewed a number of experts and scholars.
Balanced development, balanced population
According to the preliminary calculation of the data of the seventh national census, among the more than 2,700 counties and districts that have published data, nearly 1,200 counties and county-level cities have experienced a decrease in their permanent population from 2010 to 2020. Barriers to county economic development.
The "Opinions" first mentioned the concept of "population loss counties", emphasizing the need to guide the transformation and development of population loss counties.
Population loss is a phenomenon caused by many factors in the process of industrial economic development and urbanization in my country.
He Xiaobin, director of the County Governance Research Center of the Academy of Social Sciences of Tsinghua University, told the Beijing Think Tank that if regional industrial development and public service resources are distributed more evenly, population mobility will be more evenly distributed. "This needs to be guided by national policies," He Xiaobin said. .
In contrast, the population loss in the agricultural-dominated counties in the central and western regions may be relatively serious, and these areas are often the key areas for my country to promote the rural revitalization strategy.
In this regard, Zhang Zhenghe, director of the China County Economic Research Center of China Agricultural University, said in an interview with the media that there are currently 300 million migrant workers in my country, and only 5% of them can return to their hometowns to start a business.
If these people are engaged in the processing, transportation, storage and other related service industries of agricultural products, they will provide great assistance to the process of agricultural modernization in my country, mainly small farmers.
For those who have returned home to start a business, Zhang Qi, a professor at the Institute of Economics and Resource Management of Beijing Normal University, said that they can optimize the loan approval process, strengthen the support of financial institutions or provide entrepreneurs with a certain percentage of start-up funds in the form of incubators.
For those who fail to start a business, their losses should be reduced by means of insurance.
For start-up enterprises, certain preferential tax and fee policies should be implemented, and certain subsidies may be given to those who rely on the county's advantageous industries to start a business.
In addition, we should provide high-quality software and hardware conditions and business environment for entrepreneurial migrant workers, encourage entrepreneurial enterprises to cooperate with each other, and often conduct research on typical entrepreneurial enterprises to fully understand the living conditions and needs of entrepreneurial enterprises and provide timely assistance.
Match the regional characteristics to plan the development path
After the release of the "Opinions", the relevant person in charge of the Planning Department of the National Development and Reform Commission said in an interview with the media that it is necessary to respect the development laws of county towns and reasonably determine the development paths of different types of county towns.
For example, for counties around big cities, it is necessary to actively integrate into the construction and development of adjacent big cities, strengthen rapid transportation connections, and take the initiative to undertake population, industry, and functions, especially general manufacturing, regional logistics bases, professional markets, and over-concentrated public services. Relief and transfer of service resources.
County towns with advantages in resources and transportation should, based on their advantages, develop characteristic economies and pillar industries, and develop into advanced manufacturing, commercial and trade circulation, cultural tourism and other professional functional county towns.
These different counties have great differences in resource endowments, location conditions, industrial bases, and functional orientations.
Qiu Ye, an associate professor at the School of Sociology of Wuhan University, believes that this spatial imbalance of development should not be viewed from a problem-oriented perspective, because “this imbalance is precisely the key to China’s establishment of a multi-level, gradient and elastic urban system. support".
Qiu Ye divides counties in my country into "urban" counties located in central cities and urban agglomerations and "rural areas" with small peasant economy as the basic economic background, low level of industrial development, and relatively weak infrastructure construction and public service supply capabilities. Type" two categories.
He believes that the development of "urban-type" counties can start from the following points: First, identify the development orientation, highlight the advantages, and avoid low-quality blind competition.
Second, actively integrate into the urban agglomeration and metropolitan area where they are located, undertake the population, industries and functions transferred from the core urban area, actively seize the opportunity of a new round of economic development, and relieve the pressure on the central urban area.
Third, improve the population absorption capacity of the county, including rapidly improving the quality of public services, reforming the household registration system, improving the population tolerance and openness of the county, and reducing the cost of urbanization in the county to form a relative competitive advantage, especially To absorb the groups who cannot afford the cost of living in big cities and whose market capacity is relatively weak, in order to cope with the problem of weak population absorption in central cities.
For the development of "agricultural" counties, Qiu Ye believes that, first, it is necessary to comply with the trend of population flow and avoid a lot of waste of national public resources due to excessive construction and blind construction.
Second, take the satisfaction of people's livelihood needs and the supply of public services as the core content of the development of "rural-type" counties, and form an organic public service system that integrates county-level planning and complements the functions of counties and villages.
Third, improve the industrialization development capacity of the agricultural economy and realize the docking with the national large market.
It is an important direction for the future development of the county to bring together the economic factors that are relatively scattered in the countryside, form a scale effect, and form a smooth cycle with large and medium cities.
County development must adhere to differentiated positioning and classified policies.
Wang Defu, an associate professor at the School of Sociology of Wuhan University, said that at present, except for the county towns with location and resource advantages and a certain industrial development foundation, most of the county towns in the central and western regions basically do not have the foundation to replicate the development experience of the "Top 100 Counties".
Therefore, it is necessary to strictly prevent the construction of large-scale industrial parks in the name of developing the county economy, out of reality and against the law, blindly attracting investment, wasting land resources and government financial resources, and preventing the "big urbanization" of county construction. Its own needs, and the county style that matches its governance capabilities.
Recruiting talents: institutional innovation and all-round service
The more backward counties are, the more talents are needed for their development.
However, talent often flows from relatively backward regions to developed regions without external intervention.
Therefore, Chen Lijun, a professor in the Department of Government Management of the School of Public Administration of Zhejiang University, believes that how to effectively recruit talents is a problem that must be solved in the economic development of the county.
Chen Lijun introduced that in recent years, the research on the subject of talent economic geography has found that, unlike the traditional concept of "talents follow the flow of industries", in reality, industries often follow talents.
Especially for some relatively underdeveloped regions, the story of "introducing a talent, creating an enterprise, and forming an industry" is not uncommon.
To achieve such high-quality talent-driven development, it is necessary to "spend the money on the edge".
In Chen Lijun's view, the so-called "blade" is an incentive policy for talent introduction including special funds, and a project policy to support talent entrepreneurship and innovation.
In addition to mechanisms and policies, attracting talents with high-quality services is also a good means.
Zhang Qi took Wafangdian City, Liaoning Province, the "City of Bearings" as an example. In recent years, the city has carried out three batches of "one matter, one discussion" talent work, focusing on the needs of the whole cycle and the whole chain of talent development such as children's schooling, medical care, housing security, etc. , providing all-round and refined services for talents, creating a talent development environment of "near and far", and providing a talent foundation and intellectual guarantee for the high-quality development of the county economy.
In addition, the development of county economy can also implement the system of temporary employment in a wider range.
He Xiaobin proposed that the experience of national cadres, enterprise backbones, university scholars and other talents to help and develop in the county area should be included in their evaluation and promotion indicators in the unit. This kind of temporary post policy encourages talent exchange, which can bring more resources to the development of the county area. and vitality.
The development of public services should raise the standard and expand the coverage
The "Opinions" emphasized that it is necessary to strengthen the supply of public services, improve the livelihood and well-being of the people in the county, realize the standardization and expansion of medical care, education, old-age care, cultural and sports facilities, social welfare, etc., and promote the extension of the county's infrastructure and public services to the countryside. , and strengthen the connection and cooperation between the development of the county and neighboring cities.
For the majority of county towns in the central and western regions, their development planning is based on two basic realities. One is the reality of short-term population agglomeration to county towns and long-term population loss to big cities, and the other is that rural areas will still be an important population carrier. It plays the role of a modern social stabilizer.
In this regard, Wang Defu proposed that the construction of county towns should be based on the core principle of ensuring the bottom line, focus public resources on improving the level of public service supply, build county towns into the "brain" and "heart" of county society, and build townships into public service "nodes". , to provide convenient and low-cost public service conditions for "amphibious urban and rural" farmers' families, so that farmers who stay in rural areas and settled in county towns can live a decent life, so as to more calmly achieve a higher level of social mobility and urbanization.
As for the county towns that have the conditions to develop into satellite cities of big cities, Wang Defu said that these county towns should become important bearing places for alleviating the "big city disease" and improving the ability of big cities to cope with major risks.
Satellite counties (including remote urban areas) should also play the dual task of undertaking the suburbanization of citizens and urbanization of farmers, and carry out key innovations in achieving better integration of industries and cities and building a livable city with a balance of work and housing.
A three-step strategy for the digitalization of county governance
The emergence of a new generation of ICT (information and communication) technology characterized by digitization, networking and intelligence has accelerated the construction of digital government, in order to reduce the cost of interaction between social governance entities, understand the demands of the masses in real time, and realize the efficient and efficient public services in the county area. Promoting the modernization of county-level government governance capacity provided effective support.
To further release the efficiency of digital governance, Zhang Qi proposed to actively promote the large-scale deployment and base station construction of the fifth-generation mobile communication (5G) network to ensure coverage of all counties, significantly increase user penetration, and expand the coverage of gigabit optical networks. Make up for the shortcomings of county infrastructure.
At the same time, deepen the sharing of government data resources, strengthen standard coordination and system docking, and promote the integration and sharing of data among public sector departments such as emergency response, municipal administration, transportation, health care, and community.
According to the research by the Research Center for County Governance, Academy of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, there are good digital solutions for county governance that have emerged in my country, which have the "three new" characteristics of new ideas, new models, and new technologies.
Among them, the new idea refers to digitization centered on the county; the new model refers to the comprehensive integration of information and data in the fields of industry, agriculture, culture and tourism, government affairs, community, education, and medical care in the platform + N model; The technologies mainly include cloud storage, modernization of government affairs applications, video aggregation and intelligent analysis of districts and counties, smart agriculture based on spatial information technology, remote smart diagnosis and treatment based on real-time audio and video, etc.
However, the status quo of unbalanced regional development in my country also determines that the level and degree of government application of digital technology in different regions will be different.
Wang Defu said that as far as counties in the central and western regions are concerned, most of them are still rural societies with a strong local character. The focus of social governance in these places is to organize scattered farmers and use villages as units to build beautiful homes by themselves. achieve common prosperity.
Therefore, in order to avoid over-reliance on digital technology, governance should still focus on mobilizing and organizing people to improve the level of social cooperation and autonomy.
Collection of Excellent Cases of Digital Government Construction
Co-organizers: Beijing News, National Institute of Development and Strategy of Renmin University of China, China Institute of Education and Social Development of Beijing Normal University, Zhou Enlai School of Government and Management of Nankai University, Qianlong.com
Supporting unit: China Mayors Association
Solicitation content: In order to help the construction of my country's digital government and promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, the Beijing News will solicit relevant excellent cases from all over the country.
This collection focuses on the direction of "online governance", including public service, emergency management, environmental sanitation, urban management, community governance, smart city, social conditions and public opinion, and other social governance categories.
Collection time: 2022.07.12-2022.09.12
Collection method: The collection of outstanding cases is open to the whole society, including various social governance participating units or entities such as provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government, cities, counties, towns, and townships, institutions, social organizations, and enterprises.
Submission method:
1. Online submission: The Beijing News App "Collection of Excellent Cases of Digital Government Construction" (scan the QR code to enter the topic).
2. Email submission: Reply to "Excellent Case 2022" through the WeChat public account of "Xingjing Think Tank" to obtain the declaration form. After completing the filling, package the relevant electronic version materials (file name: case name + declaration unit + contact number) and send it to the mailbox: futurecity@xjbsmartcity.com.
Beijing News reporter Kong Xue