Research On Urban-rural Basic Public Services Differences And Effects In China

After the Reform and Open-up, Chinese economy has experienced rapid growth in the decades-long, material wealth has been greatly enriched and people’s living standards have been improved steadily. We have finished the change from the survival type society to the development type society. But with the great growth of national wealth, some essential public goods and services, like compulsory education, basic social security, and basic health care and so on, which are used to meet citizens’ basic survival and development rights, are not be supplied and improved timely and fairly. Selective allocation of basic public services still exists between different regions and groups. Citizens have not been treated equally. The imbalance of the configuration of the basic public services causes part of citizens’ basic survival and development without security. It is contrary to the bottom line of the principle of fairness. The imbalance of basic public services in China’s urban and rural areas is one of the typical manifestations of it. Of course, the social problem of basic public services’imbalance between urban and rural areas does not appear after the Reform and Open-up. It was a social phenomenon which has existed since the funding of New China, but was concerned when the values of co-ordinate development and equitable distribution were praised highly by the public. So coordinating development of urban and rural areas and narrowing the urban and rural basic public services gap are becoming national policies.China’s current urban and rural basic public services should include the four elements of compulsory education, public health and basic medical care, basic social security and public employment services. Evaluation of basic public services’level in urban and rural areas shows that there are great differences of each service and overall level; moreover the differences of some services are becoming greater. Due to the conduction mechanism of the basic public service system, the differences will cause a wide range impact of urban and rural areas’economy and social. To reflect the urban and rural basic public service difference, it can be found that the essence of their difference is unfair distribute of national wealth from the economic perspective, and unequal distribute of social rights from the political perspective. The phenomenon shows three distorted relationships, like urban-rural relation, townspeople-farmer relation, and intergovernmental relations. Many factors cause the differences of urban and rural areas’ basic public service, including the historical roots, financial system problems, lack of motivation for grass-roots government, objective difficulties in basic public service provision in rural area and so on. Eliminating the unreasonable differences of urban and rural areas’ basic public services and realizing the urban and rural areas’ basic public service equalization is future trend of basic public services supplement. On the basis of summing up the experience of domestic and international equalization of basic public services, the paper points out that the realizing of equalization must be controlled from three nodes of fairness that’s starting point, process and results. The macro route is filling vacancies, then filling shorts, then convergence and equalization. The important problems which must be solved are motivations and capacities for grass-roots governments, participation and coordination of multi-agent, farmers’ awareness of their rights and expression for their interests, the convergence of urban and rural basic public service system, standard selection and targets set in the process of equalization and so on.The research can be divided into eight parts:The first part is introduction. The main contents are introducing the research’s background and significance, research ideas, research methods and also the breakthrough points and difficulties. Moreover the literature review about relevant studies at home and abroad is used to provide a reference and further analysis to the article.The second part is to sum up the connotation of basic public services and their theoretical explanation. This part is to sum up relevant theories, and to define the concept and scope of basic public services, and to summarize and classify the basic public services’differences, and to analyze several factors affect the supply of basic public services in order to lay the groundwork for following analysis.The third part is to analyze the historical evolution and differentiation of the basic public services’ provision in China’s urban and rural areas. This part’s contents include dividing the stages of supply of urban and rural areas’ basic public services from a historical point of view and then conclude that China’s rural areas’basic public services have changed the supply way from burden rarely to burden mainly by the system, but from burden all to burden mainly by the system to China’s urban areas’. From the historical evolution, the study analyses macro-differences of institution and its change paths and also the micro-differences of institutional arrangements to state the differences existing in urban and rural basic public services for a long time.The fourth part is to measure the differences in urban and rural basic public services. Above all, a system of evaluation including four aspects and eighteen indexes is designed in the principle of testability, operability, comprehensive and comparable. Then the study measures the differences in urban and rural basic public services in the years form2004-2009with Factor Analysis Approach. The results show that differences between the urban and rural areas’basic public services is still evident, thereinto, differences in public health and basic health care and compulsory education show a tendency to expand and the unreason of the differences continue to deepen. Also the differences in basic social security are unreasonable, but the unreasonable level is returning to a reasonable level. While the overall difference in urban and rural areas is experiencing the instability from unreasonable levels to reasonable level. So stabilizing the rural growth rate of basic public services and the priority are very important.The fifth part is to analyze effects of the difference in China’s urban and rural areas’basic public services. The effects include economic effect and social effect. The economic effects are adjusting urban and rural residents’income inversely, and inhibiting farmers’ demands in consumer, and hindering the free flow of migrant workers and their social inclusion. The social effects are harming the anti-poverty in rural areas, and aggravate the distinction between urban and rural areas, and undermining the social equity and justice.The sixth part is to introspect the differences. The contents of this part are analyzing the essence of the differences and probing three twisted relation reflected by these differences, that are relationship between China’s urban areas and rural areas, and relationship between urban residents and rural residents, and relationship between governments at all levels. Furthermore, the historical and practical reasons of the differences and the trend of the supply behavior are also important contents.The seventh part is to introduce experiences about basic public services’ supply at home and aboard. First of the part is to conclude the supply patterns and policies on basic public service abroad and analyze the foundation and development orientation of the equalization of basic public services in order to provide a reference and inspiration for our basic public service equalization practice. At the same time, take Chengdu for an example, the study summarizes China’s equalization practice and also refines some inspirations.The eighth part is about some relevant thinking and the macro ideas on equalization of basic public services in China’s urban and rural areas. This part analyzes the connotation of equalization from the point view of the social equity of bottom line and the fairness about starting point and process and results. Besides, this part has also concluded many difficulties about basic public services’ equalization and then put forward the macro idea about equalization, which is filling vacancies, then filling shorts, then convergence and equalization.