Lu Ming: The tough battle to reform the household registration system is in megacities and megacities
China News Weekly reporter / Su Jiede
"The reform of the household registration system should be the '14th Five-Year Plan', and one of China's most important reforms in the next 15 years." Lu Ming, a distinguished professor of Antai School of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said in an exclusive interview with China News Weekly.
In his view, my country's working-age population has begun to show negative growth, and the aging population and the declining birthrate trend are superimposed, which will soon bring about a negative growth in the total population.
The reform of the household registration system can create institutional conditions to allow the population to flow, to make fuller use of the labor force, to increase labor productivity, to alleviate the problem of urban aging, and to improve the competitiveness of cities.
Urban population growth cannot be restricted by planning
China News Weekly: During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the urbanization rate of the permanent population in my country reached 60%, while the urbanization rate of the registered population was only about 45%. Some people call it semi-urbanization or pseudo-urbanization.
If these people cannot be made citizens, what problems will it bring?
Lu Ming: It is difficult for the migrant population to take root in the cities where they live and work. Even those who have lived in the city for a long time cannot get equal access to public services and social security. This phenomenon is called semi-urbanization or pseudo-urbanization.
In our cities, about 30% of the permanent population is a migrant population, awaiting urbanization.
In some mega cities, half of the non-local migrant population has lived for more than 5 years, and about 20% have lived for more than 10 years.
Generally speaking, as long as the population flows across regions within a country, as long as they can be legally employed and can join the social security system, the public services that people enjoy should be equalized.
The first problem caused by this phenomenon is inequality.
Public services should have the function of equalization and reduce the gap in the quality of life between people.
However, for a long time, urban public services have been linked to the household registration system, and the population without local household registration cannot equally enjoy public services and social security.
The current household registration system has widened the welfare gap between people in cities.
Second, it also affects China's economic structure.
A large number of immigrants can't live and work in the city, they always want to return to their hometown, and the money they earn is always used to save.
If immigrants can live and work in cities and become more optimistic about their future expectations, and their income will not drop significantly with age, consumption can be released, which can improve the quality of life and improve the country's under-consumption situation.
Third, it will further restrict the process of urbanization.
Even people who have long-term stable employment and living in cities cannot equally access public services and social security. This has given the groups who have not yet emigrated a signal of high urban living costs and institutional inequality, and they lack the motivation to emigrate.
In turn, this will make the long-term labor supply shortage in cities.
At present, in very large and super-large cities with severe labor shortages, insufficient labor supply has brought about rising production costs and rising prices in the service industry.
In addition, tens of millions of left-behind children and migrant children are the labor force for China's future economic development.
If the education problems of this generation of migrant workers cannot be improved through citizenization and integration into the city, it will actually not be conducive to the improvement of the next generation's education level and the quality of human resources, and it is not conducive to the sustainable development of China's economy and society.
China News Weekly: Many cities use insufficient water resources, environmental degradation and other reasons to control population size. Is there any problem with this approach?
Lu Ming: The practice of controlling population size on the grounds of insufficient water resources or environmental degradation is untenable in theoretical research and international experience.
I have used data to prove that the size of the urban population has only a very weak relationship with pollution and congestion. This relationship is so weak that it is almost impossible to control the size of the population to alleviate it.
Like Shanghai, it has been very well managed in terms of pollution control and urban development. These are actually not problems.
In fact, the lack of water resources mainly depends on the industrial structure of a city.
I studied Beijing’s water shortage a few years ago and found that from 2000 to 2015, Beijing’s population increased by about 60%, and the total economic volume increased by nearly seven times. However, the water consumption almost remained unchanged, and there was even a slight decline. The main reason is What is it?
In the adjustment of Beijing's industrial structure, the proportion of industrial and agricultural output value has dropped sharply, and the proportion of service industry has increased. Water consumption has not risen sharply, but has declined.
At the same time, Beijing has solved the city's water supply problem through the use of recycled water and the South-to-North Water Diversion, and the groundwater level has also been restored.
If there is no such problem in Beijing, how can other cities exist?
Therefore, the problem of insufficient water resources does not constitute an obstacle to urban development. At least in large cities in eastern China, the problem of water resources cannot be used as a reason to limit population growth.
As for pollution, that shouldn't be a problem.
In the past two years, the air quality has been greatly improved through industrial restructuring across the country. No city has yet to improve its environmental quality by controlling the size of its population.
China News Weekly: In the past, when local policymakers made plans for local population size, their goals were often far lower than the actual urban population growth rate. What problems would this lag bring?
Lu Ming: Urban planning lags behind the actual population growth, which fully shows that the population growth of a city cannot be restricted by planning.
The concentration of population in big cities and surrounding metropolitan areas has its objective law, which reflects the vitality of economic growth and job creation brought about by the agglomeration effect of cities.
Even if there are various problems in the city, people still have to run here, which shows people's yearning for a better life.
If this population growth trend is not objectively recognized, there will be a lag in public services and infrastructure, resulting in a shortage of public services, such as shortage of school degrees, insufficient number of hospital beds, insufficient road planning, congestion, and insufficient underground pipeline layout. , Resulting in various shortcomings in urban sewage and electricity consumption.
When shortcomings appear, if we lack rational thinking, do not think about the problem from the perspective of insufficient supply and insufficient planning, but attribute it to too many people, take measures to limit the population size, formulate austerity urban planning, and finally Makes urban development fall into a vicious circle.
The free flow of labor within the urban agglomeration will be the first to be realized
China News Weekly: In the "Proposals" of the "14th Five-Year Plan", what new ideas and directions are proposed for the above-mentioned problems of urbanization and the settlement of migrants?
Lu Ming: There is a very important change. The state has already proposed policies to further promote mutual recognition of points settlement within urban agglomerations.
This means that, at least within urban agglomerations, settlement is relatively free.
The free flow of labor within urban agglomerations will be realized first, and cross-city citizenization will become easier.
China News Weekly: In the reform of the household registration system, the pace of megacities and megacities is relatively slow. Is it necessary to speed up the pace?
Lu Ming: Currently, cities with a permanent population of less than 5 million have achieved relatively free settlement.
Although the number of cities with a permanent population of more than 5 million in urban areas is not many, about 19, the floating population of these mega and mega cities accounts for half of the country's trans-regional and urban-rural immigrants.
Therefore, the next tough battle to reform the household registration system will be in megacities and megacities.
Megacities and megacities have relatively active economies, higher levels of development, better quality of public services, and greater potential for job creation.
In the future, these cities should assume greater responsibilities, or even decisive responsibilities, in promoting urbanization and absorbing migrant workers.
As for the timetable, it depends on our determination to reform.
Some megacities and megacities are calculated on the basis of 40% of the migrant population, with a one percentage point reduction each year, and it will take 40 years to complete the household registration system reform.
Forty years is a too long historical cycle, and it is possible that a generation of migrants will bear the cost of the reform of the household registration system, which is too great.
Don’t blindly expand where the population is not growing or even negative.
China News Weekly: In the case of uneven regional development, in order to narrow the gap in some underdeveloped areas with outflow of population, there has been over construction of industrial parks and new cities. What do you think of these phenomena?
Lu Ming: This problem is indeed widespread in China.
After 2003, the population is still concentrated in the eastern region, but a large number of new construction land indicators have been given to the central and western regions, and the proportion of the central and western regions is getting higher and higher. What happened to these land?
The first is to build an industrial park, and the second is to build a new city.
The indicator of construction land was directed to the population outflow areas in the central and western regions, resulting in no supply where there is demand, and no demand where there is supply.
Objectively speaking, China has a large number of underdeveloped regions, and the geographical conditions are not good enough, especially some places in the central and western regions that are far away from large ports and large cities.
Since we have traditionally focused on economic aggregates, every place hopes to stimulate economic growth through investment and build a large number of industrial parks.
However, the objective economic development law tells us that increasing industrial investment in some underdeveloped areas with poor geographical conditions not only failed to produce effective investment promotion results, but put a heavy debt burden on local governments.
What is even more regrettable is that some places have good natural scenery and are very suitable for the development of tourism.
However, due to the one-sided emphasis on industrial development and investment in polluting industries, pollution has increased, which is also a small loss for the development of the city.
The lessons have been very profound, and I hope that in the next stage of local development, these problems can be corrected.
China News Weekly: The "Proposals" of the "14th Five-Year Plan" proposes to promote urbanization with county towns as an important carrier.
This year’s Central Document No. 1 proposed that regions with conditions should build county towns in accordance with the standards of small cities.
How should the county economy break through?
Lu Ming: Generally speaking, the scale of the county economy is not large enough, and the financial resources are not strong enough.
The limitation of the county economy lies in the room for economic growth.
From a regional perspective, coastal areas, especially some counties around large cities, have huge room for economic growth, so don’t worry too much.
In some counties far away from big cities and far from coastal areas, the room for economic growth will be limited, and the population may flow out further, or even negative population growth may occur.
This requires the use of the economic resources and taxes of big cities to improve the public service level of the county in the form of transfer payments, and ultimately reduce the gap in public service levels between different cities.
When making plans and making investments, it is necessary to objectively understand the inflow and outflow of population driven by economic laws, and do not blindly expand where the population is not growing or even negative.
I have repeatedly reminded that if the trend of a place is negative population growth, then blindly increasing investment will make the situation worse.
In the end, investment went down, but there was no corresponding industry and population growth, and local government debt increased. It can be said that it is too hasty and the gain is not worth the loss.
China News Weekly, Issue 8 of 2021
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