Rural revitalization is an important strategy for China to develop rural areas, promote poverty alleviation, and eliminate urban-rural differences. The rural revitalization strategy aims to achieve five major goals, which are industrial prosperity, ecological livability, civilized rural lifestyle, effective governance, and prosperous life. To achieve these five goals, many resources and elements must flow to rural space. In other words, for rural areas to be revitalized there must be people, funds, technology, industry, culture, livelihood and governance in the village. If the rural areas are left to decline, then rural revitalization will be impossible.
According to the documents of the Chinese central government, in rural revitalization, one of the most important factors would be developing the industry. However, the most important element is in fact,people. The term "people" here does not only refer to the native residents of the rural areas, but also the migrants from cities and towns. These outsiders should be attracted to the rural areas, investing and contributing their knowledge there. What is certain is that in the future, rural revitalization in China cannot be dependent solely on farmers who currently reside in rural areas; a large number of outsiders who are interested in rural areas and agriculture are required as well. Judging from the current trend of urbanization in China, residents in the rural revitalization landscape are not only farmers with fixed status, but must also include a large number of urban people who are engaged in agricultural works and are willing to live in rural areas.
According to the statistics released by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture on November 12, the number of entrepreneurial innovations in China's rural areas has reached 7.4 million. At present, Chinese farmers' cooperatives, family farms, large professional households, and agricultural enterprises have appeared in large numbers. The total number of new agricultural enterprises has reached 4 million, and the number of new professional farmers has exceeded 15 million. The total number of migrant workers, graduates of secondary schools and colleges, retired soldiers, entrepreneurs, and the technological talents has reached 7.4 million, while the number of the local non-agricultural entrepreneurs has reached 31.4 million, making them a new force for rural revitalization. These people are known as "new farmers" by the Ministry of Agriculture.
What did these "new farmers" bring? The first would be the new industries. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture, China's agricultural product processing industry has developed to be more refined. In 2017, the processed output value reached RMB 22 trillion, and the ratio with agricultural output value increased from 1.9:1 in 2012 to 2.2:1. The agricultural industry chain accelerated, while leisure agriculture and rural tourism are booming. In 2017, the operating income reached RMB 740 billion, attracting more than 10 million farmers to work, and 2.8 billion tourists to rural areas. The agricultural production service industry has developed rapidly, and agricultural resources supply, product agglomeration, logistics, and distribution have been widely carried out, with an annual output value of more than RMB 200 billion. The second is new technology. According to statistics, in the agricultural production, the main producing areas gradually realized "machine substitution", and the comprehensive mechanization rate exceeded 66%. In the construction of the whole industrial chain of agriculture, the application of comprehensive coordination and supporting technologies aim to promote the storage and packaging technology of green production, the contribution rate of agricultural science and technology progress reached 56%. In the agricultural management, the application of new generation information technology, product information collection, network settlement has become a new skill for farmers. In 2017, there are more than 200 million rural internet users, and rural online retail sales reached RMB 120 million, driving more than 28 million farmers to work in the related fields or to start the related businesses.
The great role played by the "new farmers" should prove the importance of the "people" that we analyzed earlier in this article. Compared with China's 5.7661 billion rural resident populations, the scale of 7.3 million rural entrepreneurs in the rural areas is obviously not big enough. To revitalize the country's rural areas, it is clear that more people, capital, and technology are needed to flow to the countryside. So can the interest of these "new farmers" be protected in the long run? What are the means to attract more economic factors to the rural areas? In our view, the necessary institutional reforms and institutional guarantees are indispensable. The most important system is probably the reform of the land system.
In the design of rural land system reform, Anbound's researchers have proposed policy recommendations; we believe that it is possible to find a space for rural land reform under the condition that the rural collective land system is unchanged. The basic idea is to legally exercise the "urban and rural land ownership", that is to give the rural land the same legal rights as urban land to attract urban industrial and commercial capital into the rural market through long-term trading rights. Since the collective ownership of land is unchanged, it is necessary to let the farmers gain land benefits. Specifically, the first is to moderately liberalize the rural housing market and allow the use of rural housing sites to be circulated in a market manner. Second, continue to liberalize the ownership to use agricultural land, and make good use of the space of the "separation of three rights relating to agricultural land" reform policy. More urban industrial and commercial capital should be invested in agriculture to promote the upgrading of the agricultural industry. The long-term use ownership transfer guaranteed by the system can attract more capital into rural areas and agriculture, as well as more urban population flow to rural areas.
China's rural areas are vast, and the urban-rural differences are wide; there should be more than one type of rural land transformation. In rural areas around major large and medium-sized cities, land system reform can be used to obtain land benefits. On the other hand, farmers in remote, traditional agricultural and barren areas might not benefit directly from urbanization; to solve the problems of farmers in these areas, comprehensive methods should be devised, with indirect measures include rising food prices, developing the production of unique local products, aiding in laws and regulations, and adopting special fiscal transfers.
Final analysis conclusion:
China's rural revitalization has issued political mobilization for the development of rural areas. To achieve this goal, more people and factors need to get to rural areas, and long-term participation in rural industrial development and construction are required. For this, China must take the reform of the land system as the core, and carry out a series of rural institutional reforms, and provide more long-term institutional guarantees for more "new farmers", and for the industrial and commercial capital of the rural areas.
