Research On The Urbanization Development Strategy With Chinese Characteristics

Throughout the history of world urbanization, China’s urbanization is a newly growing force. It constantly explores its own suitable development path in Chinese soil. However, due to the complex historical background, the backward economic basis, the distorted institutional arrangements and special transitional period, China’s urbanization has gone through a difficult and tortuous path in the decades of wind and rain. Its development path and development pattern are very unique; the regional disparities and urban-rural conflicts are very sharp. They are mainly reflected in the ups and downs of the path of urbanization, the lagging behind of the pace of development, the amphibious nature of population mobility, the price scissors of urban and rural areas, and the emergence of the enlargement of urban-rural development gap, the outbreak of "urban disease", the continuous appearance of "rural disease", the large regional difference in urbanization, and the high frequency of urban social conflicts. China is currently in the embarrassing predicament difficult to be resolved by the city itself. The successful urbanization of developed countries show the good examples in some countries of better dealing with the relationship between urbanization and industrialization, urban prosperity and rural development, government services and market guidance, population migration and identity transformation, especially the mutual promotion between urbanization and industrialization. Such typical phenomena did not occur in China’s urbanization, which is worthy of study and reflection.Traced back, the crux of the problems and difficulties of China’s urbanization lies in the institutional deficiencies and the economic constraints.Urbanization after the founding of People’s Republic of China sixty years ago has shown that China’s urbanization has departed from the country’s political and economic requirements and the institutional deficiencies have become more prominent. They include rigid constraints of the binary system, strict blockade of urban and rural household registration system, obvious defects of land management system, the poor role of urban social security system, the serious absence of urban employment management system, the serious absence of urban education management system, and the imperfection of administrative division system. Since reform and opening up, due to the path dependence of economic development system centering around economic construction, China’s urbanization process has encountered serious economic constraints, mainly in the aspects of the overall low quality of agriculture, disproportion of the industrial structure, backward development of the service industry, imbalance in regional economic structure, the high price of urban housing, the rash development of urban agglomeration, and the difficulties in urban financing. All in all, the biggest problems in the urbanization in China are the deficiency in institutional arrangements and the lack of related systems. The establishment of institutional arrangements of China’s urbanization must be fundamentally promoted so as to design a more scientific and more effective development strategy for the urbanization in China.The17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China opened a new chapter for the development of urbanization with Chinese characteristics. It put forward a principle, that is, overall planning of urban and rural areas, rational layout, land conservation, functional perfection, and guidance of the larger city for the smaller one to promote the coordinated development of large, medium and small cities and small towns. And it promoted higher requirements for the urbanization with Chinese characteristics from an overall view, that is, development of urbanization with Chinese characteristics under the new urban-rural dual economic strategy. New urban-rural dual economy is a new type of dual economy contributed by the modern urban economy and the modern rural economy. It gets rid of the extensive urban economy and traditional rural economic development model, focusing on building the modern rural areas with the modern agriculture as the core motivation, and the modern city with the advanced industry and the modern service industry as the core motivation. The strategic thinking for the urbanization with Chinese characteristics is to take the development of new industrialization as the basis, the urban and rural institutional innovation as a prerequisite, the new urban rural patterns of the interaction and blending of modern urban and rural areas as the basic task. In order to realize this goal, the system must be designed to accelerate rural surplus laborers "come away" to ensure that the city both "get in" and "hang on" so as to achieve the sound situation of urbanization, that is, rural areas are led by urban areas; urban areas are promoted by rural areas, and the win-win situation, that is,"see things and also the people", and at last pave a way for the urbanization of people-orientation and scientific development with Chinese characteristics.The priority of the development strategy of urbanization with Chinese characteristics is to build the effective strategy model and the system path. First, to design the strategy model of modern urban development, which relies on modern urban network and the modern industrial system to build a ternary coupling mode: small towns with the modern agriculture as the support, small and medium cities with modern manufacturing industry as the support, large cities with modern service industry and high-tech industry as the support. The top-level design model will establish an industrial association among modern agriculture, modern manufacturing, modern service and hi-tech industries, ensuring the long-term motivation support of cities of different sizes; on this basis, it will promote the coordinated development of large cities, medium and small cities, and small towns, creating favorable conditions for the establishment of urban system with Chinese characteristics. Secondly, to design the effective path arrangement for modern cities in terms of the system, with the priority of the dual economic structure reform, adjustment of urban and rural household registration system, establishment of urban and rural labor markets, improvement of urban education management system, improvement of the urban housing system, and improvement of the social security system. Thirdly, to design the effective path arrangement for modern rural areas in terms of the system, with the priority of innovation of rural land management system, improvement of the modern rural cooperative organizations, establishment of the modern rural financial system,improvement of the mechanism of agricultural technological innovation and dissemination, improvement of the rural social security system, and the establishment of modern rural education development mechanism.The development strategy of urbanization with Chinese characteristics needs to be further promoted on the strategic focus of the urbanization development. The emphasis is to attach great importance to the work of urbanization, make urbanization a national development strategy, and play the macro-guiding role in the development of national urbanization. Stress should be placed on the strategic role of planning, developing planning of different levels and areas and leading the healthy development of urbanization. It is necessary to cultivate a number of network-based, large-scale modern urban agglomerations so that it can become an important growth pole to radiate and promote regional economic development. Agricultural productivity should be improved in all around way to encourage farmers to transfer to small cities, counties or towns, thus effectively promoting the development of urbanization in rural areas. Employment should be taken as an important fulcrum of urbanization, trying every way possible to expand the urban and rural employment opportunities, especially employment opportunities for the farmers in cities. The trend of rapid population expansion in the eastern coastal areas should be curbed, and support for the central and western cities should be strengthened, improving the level of urbanization in central and western areas. Land should be taken as an important means to regulate the urban development. With the intensive use of land, a construction-intensive, compact-based city will be built. The role of market mechanism should be played for the urban construction financing in a wide range to resolve the problem of the shortage of funds in urban construction. Effective regulating measures should be taken to reduce the price of commercial housing and to provide more affordable housings for urban medium and low income groups to resolve the housing problem for urban residents. The population policy should be improved, resources should be conserved, environmental protection efforts should be strengthened to create a sound environment of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. Under the strategic thinking and institutional framework of urbanization with Chinese characteristics, the implementation of the strategic focus of urbanization development will more effectively promote the urbanization with Chinese characteristics, the integrated development of new industrialization and agricultural modernization, and create a new situation of sound and rapid development of urbanization with Chinese characteristics.