Improving Mechanisms and Institutions for the Integrated Development of Urban and Rural Areas

Form an institutional mechanism that integrates urban and rural planning, industrial layout, infrastructure, public services, factor market, and social management. This is a major proposition put forward by the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Its requirements are to accelerate the construction of a new agricultural management system, give farmers more property rights, promote equal exchange of urban and rural elements, balance the allocation of public resources, and improve the system and mechanism for the healthy development of urbanization. Urban-rural integration means that relatively developed cities and relatively backward rural areas gradually realize the rational flow and optimized combination of production factors, promote the rational distribution of productivity between cities and villages, and the close integration and coordinated development of urban and rural economy and social life, and gradually shrink and even eliminate the difference between urban and rural areas, which is an important symbol of national modernization.

China’s long-standing urban-rural dual structure is a major obstacle to the integration of urban-rural development. Improve the system and mechanism, and form new relations between industry and agriculture and between urban and rural areas in which industry promotes agriculture, urban areas support rural development, agriculture and industry benefit each other, and there is integrated urban and rural development. Only in this way can farmers participate in the modernization process on an equal footing and share the fruits of modernization. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the concept and measures of urban-rural integration continued to advance. The central government has repeatedly emphasized the need to break the urban-rural division, expand urban-rural exchanges, establish a new type of urban-rural relationship, and promote the common prosperity of urban and rural economies. The 16th CPC National Congress put forward the policy of “prospering the rural economy in an all-round way and speeding up the process of urbanization” and put forward the policy of “coordinating urban and rural economic and social development”.

The 17th CPC National Congress proposed the historical task of breaking the dual system and mechanism of urban and rural areas, and “establishing a long-term mechanism of industry promoting agriculture and urban areas supporting rural development, and forming a new pattern of integrated urban and rural economic and social development.” The 18th CPC National Congress further proposed to “promote the integration of urban and rural development” and emphasized that “solving the issues of agriculture and rural areas and farmers is the top priority of the Party's work, and the integration of urban and rural development is the fundamental way to solve the “three rural issues”.

The integration of urban and rural development is a relatively long-term development process. It refers to the new relations between industry and agriculture and between urban and rural areas in which industry promotes agriculture, urban areas support rural development, agriculture and industry benefit each other, and there is integrated urban and rural development. The essence is to make these two areas be the resource, market for each other and complementing each other in function, gradually narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas in the interactive development. The report of the 19th CPC National Congress stated: “We must insist on giving priority to the development of agriculture and rural areas, and in accordance with the general requirements of industrial prosperity, ecological livability, rural customs, effective governance, and affluent life, establish a sound urban-rural integration development system and mechanism we well as policy system to accelerate the progress of agricultural and rural modernization.”