Reflections on the Development of County Economies in Arid Western Regions
(Ma Cheng, Yueyang, Hunan)
The natural environment in China's arid northwest region is harsh, infrastructure is backward, human-land conflicts are prominent, and the overall quality of the population is low. Affected by these factors, the area lacks appeal to capital and talent, resulting in a small economic scale and weak fiscal strength, leading to slow development of county economies. Analyzing the deeper reasons, there are mainly several aspects:
Firstly, ecological environment constraints limit the potential for economic development. The arid northwest region is far inland, making it difficult for moisture to reach, forming an arid and rain-scarce inland climate. The arid region has scarce precipitation, with annual evaporation far exceeding annual rainfall, determining that usable water resources are naturally scarce, creating a fragile ecological environment in the arid region. With increasing production and living water usage, the water consumption of natural vegetation is significantly reduced, triggering a series of ecological environment issues: the decline of natural vegetation, accelerated land desertification, increased saline-alkali land area, declining groundwater levels, and the critical situation of water resource scarcity and deteriorating ecological environment, leading to a decrease in the survival quality of people within the region. Water resources, as an important material foundation supporting continuous economic and social development, have a significant impact on the coordinated development of economy, society, and ecology within the region. Therefore, using limited water resources effectively is the primary issue in developing the county economy in arid regions.
Secondly, ideological concepts constrain the vitality of economic development. Influenced by numerous factors such as natural environment, geographical location, history and culture, social traditions, and economic conditions, the awareness of small-scale peasant economy is severe in counties within the arid northwest region, with closed thinking and conservative views. Firstly, this manifests as enhanced dependency, weakened desire and ability to accept new things, waiting for national poverty alleviation, relying on relief to sustain life, without pursuing survival quality. Secondly, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding and accurate grasp of market economy rules, lacking new ideas and measures to develop county economies, severely constraining economic development.
Thirdly, insufficient talent affects the support for economic development. Restricted by treatment, living environment, and other conditions in the arid northwest region, the return rate of college and university students to counties is very low, and even fewer work in county enterprises. Due to lack of attractiveness in terms of treatment and career opportunities, most talents go to coastal areas. The gradual lack of talent leads to a serious shortage of scientific and technological support for economic development, making efforts to develop county economies difficult.
Fourthly, an imperfect market mechanism leads to weak economic growth. The arid region is often an economically underdeveloped area. First, traditional agriculture has low efficiency, with agricultural development solely pursuing increases in output and value, paying little attention to market demand, product quality, agricultural structural upgrades, and agricultural benefits. Second, industry has yet to play a dominant role, with most being traditional industries, more rough processing products, weak deep processing capabilities, low technological content, small industrial linkages, depressed consumer markets, obvious lack of market vitality, no formation of industrial chains or clusters, and no dominant industries driving the development of other industries and boosting local economic take-off. Third, private economic development is delayed, with few numbers, small scales, low levels, unreasonable industrial distribution, limited self-development potential, narrow market prospects, neglecting the cultivation of private economic entities and the creation of a favorable development environment. Fourth, limited fundraising capabilities, single financing channels, backward infrastructure, incomplete tax and technical renovation preferential policies, making investment attraction difficult.
In response to the natural, economic, and ideological factors restricting the development of county economies in the arid northwest region, the author believes that to achieve sustainable development of county economies in the arid northwest region, the following countermeasures should be taken:
Firstly, focus on regularities, rely on science and technology, restore and rebuild the ecological environment.
1. Reasonably develop and protect water resources. Water resources are the scarcest agricultural resources in the arid northwest region. To achieve sustainable survival and development, all engineering, scientific and technological, policy, and legal means must be fully utilized to accelerate the establishment of a water-saving society, improve water resource utilization rates, and build a water-saving society. A complete set of management systems and operational procedures must be formed; a batch of water-saving technologies and water conservancy infrastructures suitable for actual production needs must be constructed; a team of water resource managers who understand and can manage must be cultivated; budgetary concepts must be introduced, improving the absorption of rural labor by the secondary and tertiary industries, reducing land pressure and water usage, ensuring ecological environment water use, and maintaining oasis ecological security.
2. Prohibit indiscriminate reclamation and deforestation, strengthen returning farmland to forest. Efforts to implement ecological construction by returning farmland to forest and grassland in the arid northwest region must be intensified, adopting comprehensive measures to stabilize and treat sand. Low-yield farmland should be systematically and step-by-step returned to forest and grassland, while prohibiting new deforestation. Scientific management projects for water resource allocation and reasonable utilization at the watershed level must be implemented; natural forest protection projects must be carried out, stopping the cutting of natural forests and managing existing forest vegetation well. Under the constraints of national laws, regulations, and felling procedures, policies should be implemented where those who plant forests own them, manage them, and benefit from them, maintaining and restoring the sustainable development of oasis ecosystems.
3. Strictly control population, reduce ecological pressure. Strict family planning policies must be enforced, lowering birth rates, truly reducing population size, and reducing the pressure of population on environmental resources; labor transfer efforts must be increased through education, training, and various forms, organizing and implementing labor migration, intensifying farmer training, gradually transferring the first industry to the second and third industries, truly reducing farmers' dependence on land.
Secondly, change concepts, relax policies, release economic growth potential.
Keeping pace with the times, freeing minds, changing concepts, and expanding openness are the primary drivers for accelerating development and strengthening county economies. Developing county economies in arid regions requires first updating and breaking through in development strategies and concepts, eliminating outdated traditional county economic development views inconsistent with modern economics, establishing new scientific development concepts, recognizing talent as the first resource, and adhering to combining attracting capital and projects with attracting intelligence and talent. The government must strongly intervene, fully leveraging the foundational role of market mechanisms in resource allocation, taking relaxing related policies as the basis, advancing science and education for counties, releasing the growth potential of county economies, and safeguarding balanced urban-rural development.
1. Make every effort to dismantle policy barriers. Accelerate the rational allocation of human resources, actively guiding rural land towards concentration in a few capable individuals, legally protecting the legitimate rights and interests of land users, promoting free circulation of land use rights.
2. Vigorously develop educational undertakings. Increase educational investment to lay a solid intellectual resource foundation for economic development. The real problems of insufficient educational funds and inadequate teaching staff must be addressed, strengthening cooperation with relevant institutions, actively developing vocational and adult education, greatly enhancing the quality of young and middle-aged workers, cultivating a large number of localized talents who stay and can be utilized locally.
3. Truly strengthen intellectual support. Establish mechanisms that effectively attract and retain talent, fully tapping the potential of all types of talents, especially focusing on cultivating innovative and pioneering entrepreneur groups to drive regional development. At the same time, strengthen research cooperation with external talent colleges, scientific research institutes, organize scientific research, talent training, technology promotion, and information service work, emphasizing innovation and popularization of science and technology, using modern science and technology to transform traditional industries, actively applying new scientific and technological achievements to county economic development, and promoting sustained rapid economic development.
Thirdly, base on reality, adjust structure, promote continuous economic development.
1. Develop ecological agriculture primarily through water-saving industries. Focusing on the scientific and rational use of light, heat, water, and soil resources in the arid northwest region, with water saving as the entry point, comprehensive development research must be conducted. Promote greenhouse, warmhouse, drip irrigation, micro-irrigation, silage, planting, breeding, orchard and medicinal cultivation, integrated sunshine agriculture, facility agriculture, and efficient animal husbandry, reasonably organizing agricultural production, achieving high-yield, high-quality, and highly-efficient agriculture, realizing sustainable development, reaching a benign cycle of ecological, social, and economic systems, and harmonizing ecological, social, and economic benefits.
2. Strengthen facility construction to guide market-oriented development. The development of market maturity and improvement of investment environments are key to developing county economies in the arid northwest region. Investment in infrastructure must be increased, focusing on agricultural and rural infrastructure construction, ecological environment construction, transportation construction, energy construction, informatization construction, exploring and innovating investment and financing systems, improving the economic development environment, and achieving sustainable development of county economies. Meanwhile, cultivate diversified market subjects, guiding and organizing farmers into market subjects, expanding private economies into major market players, transforming various public-owned enterprises into true market participants, relying on fair competition to achieve common prosperity, and promoting county economies to truly develop according to market-oriented directions.
3. Accelerate urbanization to drive secondary and tertiary industries. Towns are the centers of economic, cultural, and innovative diffusion in a region, effective carriers for accelerating the development of secondary and tertiary industries in counties, and the main force driving the development of county economies and social progress. Reasonably advancing regional urbanization has strategic significance in effectively absorbing surplus rural labor and reducing population pressure on the ecological environment. As underdeveloped regions, developing county economies must adhere to synchronous advancement of industrialization and urbanization, fully utilizing the interactive effects of urbanization and industrialization, using towns as platforms, enhancing the agglomeration functions of small towns, actively guiding surplus rural labor and township enterprises to achieve reasonable industrial transfers and spatial agglomerations, strengthening the agglomeration functions and driving roles of towns in resources, talent, technology, industries, goods, and information, promoting the rapid development of the secondary and tertiary industries, and continuously strengthening county economies.
4. Implement multiple measures to activate economic growth vitality. Cultivate leading enterprises, advance agricultural industrialized operations, focusing on nurturing and supporting larger scale, stronger strength, and greater radiation power leading enterprises, extending agricultural industry chains, promoting agricultural efficiency and farmer income, accelerating county economic development; focusing on project construction, broadening investment attraction channels, optimizing economic structures through projects, enhancing development momentum through projects, vigorously promoting the industrialization process; innovate systems to develop private economies, pursuing a low-cost expansion path, expanding and strengthening private economies, guiding private and individual enterprises, especially technology-based private enterprises, to accelerate development, providing services for private economies in business registration, capital flow, market access, information consultation, etc., accelerating the process of privatization and socialized investment; explore new models of industrialized operations, surrounding the exploitation and utilization of advantageous resources in arid regions, extending agricultural industry chains, integrating production, supply, and sales, combining agriculture and animal husbandry, building bases, strengthening leading enterprises, creating brands, further enhancing the comprehensive competitiveness of county economies.