| The matter of "agriculture, farmers and countryside" is closely connected with China's reform, opening up and modernization construction. Thriving agriculture signifies a strong economic foundation, just as wealthy farmers signify a prospering country, and peaceful rural community signifies social stability. China is a big agricultural country, with 0.9 billion farmers among its total population of 1.3 billion. China's population of farmers is the largest among the countries in the world. At present, China has a rural labor force of over 0.5 billion, among which over 0. 3 billion are agricultural labor force, 0.138 billion are employed by village and town enterprises, and 0.12 billion work or do business out of home, with 0.15 billion staying in the countryside as surplus labor force. So population problem has become a "bottleneck" or a choke point of the fast development of China's rural economy and the achievement of agricultural modernization. Therefore, in order to achieve an all-round well-off society and rural modernization, the key is to change the backward situation of the countryside, narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas, and achieving a smooth transfer of the surplus rural labor force.Based on an analysis of the rural-urban transfer of both China and Japan's surplus rural labor force, aiming to draw on Japan's experiences thereof, this paper seeks to find out the root of the various problems with China's transfer of surplus rural labor force as a reference for China to solve the similar problems.This paper starts from a research of China and Japan's transfer of surplus rural labor force in terms of background, reasons, characteristics and the influence upon social economy, and then, through an empirical analysis of Yangtze River Delta of China and Tokyo Circle of Japan, illustrates the similarities and differences between China and Japan's transfer of labor force. China and Japan walked completely different paths for the transfer of their surplus labor force due to their different national situations. Japan swiftly completed its transfer of rural labor force after the World War II, which fell in need of Japan's economic development and was thus supported and guided by government policies. As the results, medium and small-sized enterprises have developed rapidly after the War, which enabled the fast recovery of Japan's economy as well as sufficient job opportunities. In the process of high-speed economic development, Japan found an effective way for its rural labor force to be directly employed in the second and tertiary industries, instead of getting employed first in the first industry or agriculture. As for the development of the tertiary industry, Japan successfully fulfilled its transfer of rural labor force. From the experiences of western countries, the development of the tertiary industry can play a positive role in reducing unemployment and maintaining social stability. A prominent feature with Japan's transfer of surplus rural labor force is that Japan's agriculture is sidelined with other industries. It has developed as an adaptation for Japan's lack of land and small-scale operation, which has become a major form of Japan's agricultural operation and has made a great contribution to promoting Japan's rural mechanization, agricultural productivity, and rural modernization.By contrast, China is a large agricultural country. Constrained by the rural-urban binary system, rural community has long been isolated from urban community. Only after China's reform and opening up a large number of hidden surplus rural labor force has been fully exposed, with agriculture thus heavily burdened. Meanwhile, the rural-urban binary system has resulted in a huge gap between rural and urban development in terms of income, life conditions, all kinds of social securities, etc. And the huge gap has become the impetus for the transfer of large number of rural labor force. However, because urban reform has been started later than rural reform and therefore conditions are not yet ripe for accepting large number of rural labor force; besides, because agriculture remains the primary industry of China, with the underdeveloped second and tertiary industries, there is no urgent need of labor force yet. Under such conditions, large numbers of rural labor force crowded into urban areas would surely cause much adverse effect.This paper points out that China's transfer of rural surplus labor force serves as both the push force and the pull force. On the one hand, the transfer of rural surplus labor force has done a great contribution to the development of social economy in relieving the pressure of employment in the countryside and in promoting the urban industrialization; on the other hand, it has meanwhile brings some negative effect on the development of social economy. Firstly, due to the massive outflow of labor force, there is no sufficient labor force for agricultural production, thus agricultural production has been severely harmed and the rural industries have been seriously hampered. Secondly, continuous development of heavy industries and chemical industries have brought social hazards such as the water, air and other environment pollutions, and thus has brought great harm to people's life conditions and production activities both in urban and rural areas. Since Japan has well solved the above problems, as a neighbor country with lot of sharing features, China should learn from Japan's experiences to carry out countermeasures and make relevant laws and regulations to solve these problems, which is a matter vital to national well-being and the people's livelihood.After an analysis and a summary of Japan's successful experiences, this paper then investigates into the basic ideas for the steady promotion of China's transfer of rural surplus labor force, and taking it as a framework. Thus puts forward the following suggestions: 1) To promote urban industrialization and the development of medium and small-sized enterprises in order to bring new job opportunities for the surplus rural labor force; 2) To improve the quality of rural labor force in order to accelerate their transfer into urban areas; 3) To vigorously promote the peasant-laborer policies in order to "digest" the surplus rural labor force locally; 4) To vigorously push the urbanization of the countryside in order to guide the surplus rural labor force to get employed in the second and the tertiary industries; 5) To strengthen government control and coordination in order to supply all necessary social securities for the transfer of the surplus rural labor force.The author of this paper has carried out the study in a way of combining literature access with field survey, making efforts to collect and review relevant documents, works, data and information from National Library, Shandong Library, Internet and other sources in order to understand the history, reasons, characteristics, the status quo, etc. of China and Japan's transfer of surplus rural labor force. Through field survey, the author gained the first-hand information about China's present status of surplus rural labor force transfer. Based on the data and materials collected and reviewed, combining theories with empirical study, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, this paper is to reveal the reasons, characteristics, the status quo of China and Japan's transfer of surplus rural labor force, as well as the existing problems in the process. This paper has chosen Yangtze River Delta of China and Tokyo Circle of Japan as representatives for case study to reveal the direction, the status quo of China and Japan's transfer of surplus rural labor force, as well as the existing problems and the solutions. As for the way of research, this paper has effectively combined the specific methods, such as historical analysis and status quo analysis, comparative analysis and empirical analysis. Finally, through sorting out and summing up the relevant information, preliminary research paper comes into being; the final research paper is available after several revisions and polishes.It is an innovation that by studying the international environment, domestic policies and industrial structure of postwar Japan, the paper investigates the experience of its surplus labor force transfer in agriculture; and through historical comparison, provides experiences to deal with such similar issues for the present China. |
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