VI. Improving Mechanisms and Institutions for Integrated Development of Urban and Rural Areas

The urban-rural dual structure is a main obstacle to the integrated development of urban and rural areas. We must improve the mechanisms and institutions to 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 urban and rural areas achieve integrated development, so that the overwhelming majority of farmers can participate in the modernization process on an equal basis and share the fruits of modernization.

20. Accelerating the building of a new type of agricultural operation system. We will maintain the fundamental status of family operation in agriculture, advancing the innovation of an agricultural operation model featuring the joint development of family operation, collective operation, cooperative operation and enterprise operation. We will maintain the collective ownership of rural land, protect farmers' contracted land-use rights by law, and boost the collective economy. We will stabilize rural land-contracting relationships which will remain unchanged for a long time to come. On the premise of upholding and improving the system for providing the strictest possible protection for farmland, we will endow farmers with the rights to land tenure, land use, land revenue, land transfer and mortgage and guarantee of contracted land use, and allow farmers to develop industrialized operation of agriculture by becoming shareholders using their contracted land-use right. We will encourage the transfer of contracted land-use right to big, specialized operators, family farms, farmers' cooperatives and agricultural enterprises, so as to develop large-scale agricultural operations in diverse forms. We will encourage rural areas to develop the cooperative economy, support large-scale, specialized and modernized operations. We will allow qualified cooperatives to receive fiscal funds from the government, to hold and manage assets formed from fiscal subsidies, and to engage in credit cooperation. We will encourage and guide industrial and commercial capital to invest in rural areas to develop modern planting and breeding industries suited for commercialized management, and introduce modern factors of production and operation models into agriculture.

21. Endowing farmers with more property rights. We will safeguard the rights and interests of farmers as members of collective economic organizations, vigorously promote farmers' joint-stock partnerships, grant farmers the rights to possess, profit from, pull out with compensation, mortgage, guarantee and inherit shares of collective assets. We will ensure rural households' usufruct of their homestead, and improve the rural homestead system through reform. We will select several pilot areas to steadily and prudently push forward the mortgage, guarantee and transfer of farmers' residential property rights, and expand the channels for farmers to increase their property income. We will set up a rural property rights transfer market, and promote the open, fair and procedure-based operation of rural property rights transfer.

22. Promoting equal exchanges of factors of production and balanced allocation of public resources between urban and rural areas. We will protect farmers' rights and interests concerning the factors of production, ensure migrant workers receive equal pay for equal work, ensure farmers share equally the gains from added value of land, and ensure financial institutions' rural deposits are allocated mainly for agricultural and rural use. We will improve the system of supporting and protecting agriculture, reform the system of subsidizing agriculture, and improve the system of subsidizing major grain-producing areas. We will improve the agricultural insurance system. We will encourage investment in rural development, and permit enterprises and social organizations to start all kinds of undertakings in rural areas. We will make overall plans for developing urban and rural infrastructure and communities, and promote equitable access to basic public services in urban and rural areas.

23. Improving the institutions and mechanisms for promoting the sound development of urbanization. We will stick to the path of a new-type urbanization with Chinese characteristics, push forward people-oriented urbanization, promote the coordinated development of megacities, mid-sized cities, small cities and small towns, promote the integrated development of industries and cities, and advance urbanization and the building of new rural areas in a coordinated manner. We will improve the urban spatial structure and management pattern, and enhance the urban comprehensive carrying capacity. We will promote innovation in urban construction management. We will establish a transparent and procedure-based investment and financing mechanism for urban development, allow local governments to expand the channels of financing for urban development by issuing bonds and other means, allow private capital to participate in urban infrastructure investment and operation by franchise and other means, and study the possibility of setting up policy financial institutions for developing urban infrastructure and housing. We will improve the standards for the establishment of cities, strictly follow the examination and approval procedures, and upgrade counties qualified for administrative division adjustment into cities in an orderly manner. We will grant towns with large immigrant populations and great economic strength the right of jurisdiction in line with their population and economic size. We will establish and improve a trans-regional urban development coordination mechanism.

We will help the eligible population to move away from agriculture and become urban residents. We will introduce new population management methods, accelerate the reform of household registration system, completely lift restrictions on new residence registration in administrative townships and small cities, relax restrictions on new residence registration in medium-sized cities in an orderly manner, lay down appropriate conditions for new residence registration in large cities, and strictly control the population size of megacities. We will steadily make basic urban public services available to all permanent residents in cities, and incorporate farmers who have registered as urban residents into the urban housing and social security network, and make sure their previous subscription to old-age insurance and medical insurance in the countryside continues in the urban social security system. We will establish a mechanism dovetailing fiscal transfer payment with the urbanized agricultural population, provide land for urban development with reasonable restrictions, and increase urban land use efficiency.