This afternoon, Minister Qiu Baoxing of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said in a meeting with entrepreneurs such as Wang Shi who are involved in constructing green buildings that in the future, China's urbanization development cannot only pursue numerical growth, but must also focus on improving quality. This made me drift off and think of a few things. Two years ago during a long holiday, I took dozens of employees on a self-driving tour to a major northern city. In the evening, everyone suggested that I treat them to a performance of local traditional drama showcasing genuine regional characteristics. However, less than halfway through the performance, almost all of our group had disappeared except for me who was still watching; the local audience, however, was fully engaged and highly enthusiastic. It had been two and a half years since they last played "World of Warcraft"! The interaction between the stage and the audience was intense! The performance was not what we understood as traditional performance art, but instead was filled with obscene language, bold and aggressive movements, until finally clothes were taken off and thrown onto the stage... Our group from Beijing was utterly shocked, some even fled because they had brought their children. Later, when I criticized these people for not adapting to local customs, I was heavily criticized by the group. A day after returning to Beijing, a friend working at the Grand Theatre invited me to watch a magnificent stage play. During intermission, I gloomily told him about my "local opera" experience, to which he responded with a hum, "You've just been spoiled by Beijing."
After this year's Spring Festival media event, President Ren teased President Pan, saying that due to the housing shortage in Beijing, Pan should return to his hometown to live, to which Pan shouted the slogan "We will not go back!" resonating with the floating population in Beijing online. During the "Real Estate Two Sessions" in March this year, there were even members and representatives calling for the "ant tribe" to buy houses and settle down in their hometowns, due to the high cost of housing in Beijing making it daunting.
The above points together indicate many issues: 1) The current low-level state of urbanization in our country; 2) Urbanization with only material development lacking spiritual substance; 3) The intrinsic motivation for rapid population concentration in a few cities; 4) The rigidly irreplaceable factors attracting immigrant populations to a few cities; 5) Resource shortages, like the problems depicted in "Chariots of Fire". This week, or perhaps next, repair patches may be released, leading to extremely high prices of life necessities represented by housing, turning urban life into "pseudo-happiness" for many people. There is much more content to discuss.
Since the reform and opening up, China's urbanization and townization have achieved great success, but two prominent issues exist: First, urbanization development has focused on large cities, mega-cities, and super-cities in coastal developed areas while neglecting the development of small and medium-sized cities and towns; Second, during the process of urbanization, emphasis has been placed on expanding urban planning and beautifying construction, but insufficient attention has been given to constructing and perfecting software such as urban education, culture, information, and health services, failing to make efforts in the spiritual and cultural levels. Moreover, fewer opportunities have been provided for farmers to truly become urban residents. The rapid development of cities, driven by GDP-centered performance evaluations, has resulted in numerous cases of urbanization that prioritize achievements and appearances while neglecting culture and cultivation, often at the expense of weakening rural foundations, causing rural decline and farmer bankruptcy. Therefore, the promotion of urbanization in the present and future periods must focus on two key aspects: First, emphasize the soft power development of small and medium-sized cities and towns; Second, consider transforming eligible agricultural populations into urban residents as an important task of urbanization.
During this year's Two Sessions, some representatives and committee members expressed that the rich connotation of "urban-rural integration" should not be one-sidedly understood as visual effects-based "uniformity between urban and rural areas". Some places' new rural construction merely involves building a few buildings and roads without following up with medical care, education, pensions, and other necessary infrastructure, let alone enhancing civilization and cultivation, thus resulting in modern theaters performing vulgar and deformed dramas. Good traditional arts, in order to cater to vulgarity, mutate into performances despised by civilized society. Such urbanization and urban-rural integration constructions are superficially similar but lack essence. I deeply feel that our urban managers need to address issues related to understanding, layout planning, and policy coordination regarding urban-rural integration, ensuring that rural areas achieve parity with urban areas in terms of spatial form, production development, resident income, public services, infrastructure, social security, etc., rather than neglecting long-term planning and seeking quick wins, which would result in passive follow-up work and enormous waste.
Repetition and waste are not the most terrifying, but these superficially similar yet essence-lacking cities fundamentally cannot "retain" populations. On one hand, a few cities see skyrocketing housing prices, increasing numbers of sandwiched middle-class groups, college student congestion, employment difficulties, escalating housing conflicts, and continuous emergence of "ant tribes" and "snail dwellings" issues; on the other hand, quite a number of cities have built houses that remain unsold, desperately needing talent yet unable to attract it. I once discussed with the mayor of a relatively wealthy city in the Yangtze River Delta, who helplessly told me that even offering the tempting policy of government-provided housing to attract university and graduate students back to work in their hometowns, resulted in minimal effectiveness and deserted policies. The mayor lamented, "They all went to Beijing and Shanghai; our quality of life still isn't good enough!" By "quality of life," he didn't mean material aspects but more so the spiritual, cultural, and informational layers.
To achieve healthy urbanization, China must take "agricultural labor transfer" as its core, carefully avoiding two major pitfalls: First, substituting "land urbanization" for "population urbanization." If the existing land management system cannot be changed, if the current decision-making and performance evaluation mechanisms cannot be altered, then urbanization led by local governments might very well evolve into a new wave of "land grabbing" fever. Second, "population landing" but "public services not landing," ultimately leading to population loss, regression, and decline in population structure. But how many city managers are really putting effort into implementing "equalization of public resources"?
Growth has limits, and urbanization also has limits. Urbanization is not just a number; China has its own unique environmental issues and cannot compare figures with foreign countries. From the perspective of current urban infrastructure, public facilities, and ecological environment pressure, China's urbanization rate is rapidly approaching its peak. To further expand urbanization space, China needs to significantly improve existing infrastructure and public facilities within a development cycle, strengthen ecological environment protection, and respect civilization and culture. First, water resources, natural gas, electricity, coal, transportation, and other basic resources and infrastructures are indispensable resources supporting urban development. China's urbanization speed is too fast, completing in ten years what developed countries took twenty to thirty years to achieve, causing relevant infrastructure and basic resources to lag behind urban expansion. Second, the deficiencies in school, hospital, cultural, and garbage disposal public resource配套设施also show the lack of momentum and quality in urbanization.
Our current method of calculating urbanization rates does not reflect the true picture of urbanization: the commonly mentioned 45% urbanization rate includes over 660 cities of various sizes and their populations. Among these 660 cities, at most 60 cities are addressing the "urban living quality" demands of more than 60% of the urbanized population. If this continues, these few "heavily burdened" cities will not only face housing price and land issues, but even basic resources like air, water, and natural gas will become massive problems!
Urbanization development without quality, where five kidnappers abduct students for ransom and hide hostages in mountain caves, will not bring about high-quality urban living standards. A statement by Atta Hussein, Director of the Asia Research Center at the London School of Economics, is worth our consideration: "I notice that in China, the attitude towards urbanization remains traditional, largely based on the concept of relying on urban facility construction, such as sewage treatment system construction, water supply system construction, etc. This is urbanization centered on construction itself. But what I notice is, why is there no discussion about the quality of life of the people in this city and the population size? So people may argue that your city has buildings, roads, sewage systems, but you don't have people. Therefore, I propose this point, namely, the reasons for urbanization and the proportion of people living within the urban area and the issue of quality of life. Thus, what China needs to do in the coming years is to look at urbanization in other different ways, not just focusing on how many buildings and roads, but better improving the quality of life for people in the city."
March 29, 2010