An Empirical Study On The Progress Of Rural-Urban Integration In Shanghai

Rural-Urban Integration is the inevitable requirement of the productivity growth and the inexorable phenomenon in human history. The dual structure scenario "Developed Cities and Lapped Countries" and "Industry Only in Cities and Agriculture Only in Countries" formed in the long history has become a serious obstacle to the further development of social productivity. Removing the obstacle and enhancing the relation and interaction between rural and urban areas is therefore regarded as an unobstructed trend in today's highly developed economy.Early in the 1980s, Shanghai proposed some strategies to promote the rural-urban integration. With over a decade's effort, it has made an outstanding progress in the integration. With it entering a new and quick growth period in the beginning of the 21st century, Shanghai has a per capita GDP of up to $5,000 at present and to $8,000 in near future, indicating the critical moment to accelerate the integration. However, the integration has tended to be slower in Shanghai in recent years. Main possible reasons may include incorrect understanding of rural-urban integration, inaccurate judgment of which stage Shanghai is on and unawareness of measures to take. In order to clarify some of these confusions, the author first put forth his understanding theoretically on rural-urban integration after tracing the related research home and abroad, then identified empirically the problems and factors that has affected the integration in Shanghai, and finally proposed possible strategic approaches to accelerating the integration in Shanghai.This author agreed to the opinion in National Situation Report III "City and country-Study on the Contradiction and Harmonious Development in China" by Chinese Academy of Sciences. That is, rural-urban integration is the guiding rule for treating the relationship between the rural and urban areas, the rule to change the situation of the separation between the two areas and the prejudice of valuing city above countryside, and to combine the two areas into a united social system by establishing a new harmonious rural-urban relationship. By improving the rural-urban functions and structures, realizing better reallocations of production factors, coordinating the benefit structure and redistribution between city and countryside, it aims to accelerating industrialization, urbanization and modernization, removing the dual structure and minimizing the rural-urban difference. Substantively, it aims to forming the functional and spatial integration between city and country.It is shown that, with the rapid development in the 1990's, not only the income and living standard of citizens but the infrastructure and township industry have also grownsignificantly in Shanghai suburb. The progress of the rural-urban integration in Shanghai was empirically investigated by applying the methodology by Yomatana etal. It is believed that, it is still in the primary phase of the integration as a whole, despite the physical and external condition to eliminate the dual structure quickly and stride forward the higher level of the integration in part of Shanghai suburb. Had the problems emerging in the course of the integration been solved properly, and the development strategies been adjusted in time, the integration would enter a new phase smoothly.Currently, the problems in the course of the integration mainly include hindrance of rural collective land circulation system, ambiguity of collective property right, unwarranted farmer's profit returns from land, pressure from the employment of surplus country work force during the advancement of industrial structure, unplanned scattered towns and weakened effect of industrial gathering in rural area, unsound social security system, inharmonized regional economic development, serious problems in resource and environmental protection, and rural-urban cultural confliction, and so on. All these problems have to some extent restricted the progress of the integration and thus affected the comprehensive competitiveness. To further the integration...