Urbanization should not be viewed simply as boosting cities. It should be an interaction between urban and rural areas.
A balanced and integrated development of the two is a precondition for urbanization to benefit the country's future in social and economic terms.
This was also stressed by General Secretary Hu Jintao in his report to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) last year.
The report emphasized that efforts should be made to form a new pattern that integrates development in the urban and rural areas.
To this end, it is important to acknowledge the differences that exist between urban and rural areas, respect these differences, and leave enough room to promote urbanization and consolidate rural infrastructure.
Many people swarm to the cities while others flee to the rural areas. They do so for both have their attractions.
Cities offer job opportunities, higher pay, convenient transportation, good education for children and entertainment. But urban residents are also troubled by high living costs, pollution, traffic jams, and discrimination in various forms.
In the rural areas, the air and water are cleaner, living costs are low, neighbors are friendly, and traditional culture is well preserved. Yet, medical services may not be readily available, children do not receive the best education, and young men and women find it difficult to get jobs.
All these disparities between the urban and rural areas are the natural results of their evolvement. An integrated development will help residents in the two areas better enjoy the advantages while easing concerns caused by the disadvantages.
Academics had raised three suggestions regarding the relationship between development of the cities and rural areas.
The first suggestion was once very popular among researchers from developed countries.
They believed that cities would attract all the rural resources during their rapid boom. Therefore, cities should be isolated to preserve rural prosperity. This proved to be valid only in theory, and never true when put into practice.
A second suggestion was carried out in some localities. Misunderstanding the term "integrated" development, they tried to turn villages into small cities or towns.
Farmers became urban residents and agriculture gave way to other industries. It was inevitable that village houses would be demolished.
A city government in Jiangsu province vowed to change all rural areas under its jurisdiction into towns over a period of time. The farmers were encouraged to move into apartments during resettlement campaigns.
But such resettlement caused trouble to villagers still engaged in farming. They could not find a proper place to store their tools and machinery, so they had to build small sheds beside their apartment buildings.
More importantly, when the farmers lived close to their lands, food scraps could be fed to their chickens and their droppings used to fertilize the land.
The move to apartments destroyed such a resource cycle, increasing the cost of farming.
This practice proved it could only be applied to about 5 percent of the rural areas.
In the suburbs of big cities, farmland was to be, or had already been, turned into industrial areas. In the west of the country, farmland was turned into forests or pastures to preserve the ecological balance.
Therefore, the resettlement of the villagers in both cases would not pose key negative influences to their lives or the agriculture.
The third suggestion was integration in a balanced manner, acknowledging the uniqueness of both areas.
Agriculture is usually managed by individuals or families while in the cities, industry is based on large-scale socialized production.
Consumption in the rural areas is friendly to the environment because of resource recycling while in cities consumption and waste is huge.
In the cities, their governments are responsible for the infrastructure and public facilities, in the villages this is undertaken by the cooperatives.
Arrangements therefore must be made in the following aspects to realize integrated development.
First, villages should stick to their traditional agricultural production, while cities develop their industrial and commercial sectors.
Farmers should be allowed to choose their agricultural produce according to their comparative advantages, while the families of one village should try to select the same produce to gain the economy of scale.
Infrastructure and other public facilities and services in rural areas should be acceptable to farmers and not thrust upon them by the cities.
Village officials in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, have done a good job in consolidating rural facilities.
They stress that traditional houses should be preserved and not demolished for "modern structures".
But modern methods for supplying clean drinking water, promoting renewable energy, and treating garbage and sewage, should be encouraged.
Villagers should also be encouraged to develop some of their lands or orchards into attractions for city dwellers, giving them an opportunity to enjoy and learn more about the countryside.
In this way, the rural community would be able to retain some of their original lifestyle as well as gain economic returns from sources other than farming.
As the campaign to build a new socialist countryside progresses, it is time for the decision-makers, especially those at the grassroots level, to re-establish the essence of rural life, to take into account the long-term interests of farmers, and refrain from introducing the development modes of cities to villages.
The author is vice-minister of construction
(China Daily March 10, 2008)
