Research on the Policy of "Man-Land-Money" Linkage in the Process of Urbanization

Huilin ZENG

College of City Construction, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China

Abstract At present, there are many problems in the self-circular development model of "land transfer-real estate development-land finance-urban sprawl" in China. The endogenous power of policy implementation is insufficient, the top-level design is not systematic enough, the departmental linkage mechanism is flawed, the local basic data is weak, and there are difficulties in technical operation. According to the current situation, this paper puts forward the following policy suggestions: based on the establishment of financial transfer payment mechanism in rural areas, the construction of the system of man, land and money should be promoted in coordination, and a scientific monitoring system of urbanization degree should be established, so as to make up for the deficiency of the slow speed of "man urbanization" and make the new urbanization healthy and sustainable.

Key words Man-land-money, Urbanization, Agricultural population, Increase-decrease linkage

1 Introduction

With the rapid development of China’s economy and the rapid progress of urbanization, most areas of China fall into the self-circular development model of "land transfer-real estate development-land finance-urban sprawl". There are also a series of problems, such as the low level of intensive use of urban land, the decoupling of population urbanization and land urbanization, and a large amount of construction land, such as rural arable land, homestead and township enterprise land, is idle due to a large number of migrant workers going to work in cities and the lack of sufficient sources of funds in rural areas. In order to improve the efficiency and quality of the development of urbanization, the central government emphasizes that it should be "based on people", "serve people", and promote a new development model of urbanization with "people as the core". It is necessary to break the institutional obstacles to urbanization, release institutional dividends, and make urbanization become the endogenous driving force of economic development. In the government work report of the two sessions in 2016, Premier Li Keqiang clearly proposed speeding up the citizenization of agricultural transfer population, deepening the reform of the household registration system, relaxing the conditions for settling in cities and towns, and establishing and improving the policies for making both the transfer payments and the land designated for urban development granted to the government of a local jurisdiction conditional upon the number of people with rural household registration who are granted permanent urban residency in that jurisdiction.

At the macro level, in the policy of "man-land-money", "man" refers to the agricultural transfer population, "land" refers to the new quota of urban construction land, and "money" refers to the central financial transfer payment. In other words, it is required that "the financial transfer payment should be linked to the citizenization of the agricultural transfer population, and the increase in the scale of urban construction land should be linked to the number of agricultural transfer population absorbed, and the amount of subsidies for urban infrastructure by financial construction funds is linked to the number of urban residents absorbed by the cities". This is considered as a policy mechanism to mobilize local governments’ enthusiasm to absorb the agricultural migrant population to settle down.

At the micro level, the policies for making both the transfer payments and the land designated for urban development granted to the government of a local jurisdiction conditional upon the number of people with rural household registration who are granted permanent urban residency in that jurisdiction, have already contained the idea of linking "man, land and money". That is, when farmers go to cities and towns to settle down, the function of land will be transferred. The scale of urban construction land increases, the scale of rural construction land decreases, and then the funds are returned to the countryside through the quota transaction formed by the increase-decrease linkage, so that it can be taken from the land and used in rural areas.

2 Problems and suggestions for the "man-land" linkage policy

2.1Problems

2.1.1There is a lack of endogenous motivation for the implementation of the "man-land" linkage policy. The policy of "linking man to land" is considered as an incentive mechanism to promote the citizenization of agricultural transfer population, and the importance of national strategy is needless to say. However, the promotion process of policy at the local level is relatively slow and difficult. Most regions believe that the "man-land" policy is a top-down political task, and there is a lack of endogenous motivation to implement the policy. On the one hand, "localities do not want to link", the land department has been given the political task of striving for land planning quota in the current situation of extensive use of construction land. If the population is rigidly linked to the quota of construction land, it is bound to adjust the planned distribution pattern of land that has already been formed. The local land departments are in an awkward position between the national policy will and the interests of the local government. On the other hand, the local government thinks that it is "unnecessary to link up" or "it does not matter whether it is linked or not".

In addition, as far as the policy design itself is concerned, linking to population is only an quota of new construction land that is open to question. Under the premise that the current stock of construction land is large enough, it is worth exploring how effective it is to use new construction land to adjust the already sharp contradiction and dislocation between man and land.

2.1.2Systematic lack of top-level design and lack of departmental linkage mechanism. At present, the policy of linking "man and land" formulated by the land department and the "man-money" policy formulated by the financial department are self-actuated system. From the analysis of the endogenous power of the policy, the incentive factor of the link between "man-land-money" should fall on "money". "Land" is a resource that needs to be regulated, and does not play the current role of the adjustment lever in front of it. Therefore, as far as the system design is concerned, there are problems in the split top-level design, which leads to the dilemma that the local authorities are easy to implement and the land department is in a one-man show.

Besides, as a systematic project, it involves many departments, such as the development and reform commission, the land and resources department, the public security department, the financial department, the housing and construction department, the man resources and social security department, as well as major institutional reforms such as household registration system reform, social security system reform, and land system reform. There is an urgent need to clarify the top-level institutional framework. State departments should establish an effective institutional mechanism to ensure a clear division of responsibilities, a clear content of work, and carry out effective inter-departmental coordination and cooperation, which is the key to the "man-land-money" linkage.

In particular, in Jiangxi and other major labor outflow provinces, how to use financial funds to arrange the construction land space and funds needed by inter-provincial migrant workers to settle in cities, and how to establish a mechanism to link the man, land and money for inter-provincial floating agricultural population is a technical difficulty that needs to be coordinated at a larger level. These problems are by no means something that local governments can explore and solve.

2.1.3Weak local basic data and difficult technical operation. "Man" is the most important core of the policies for making both the transfer payments and the land designated for urban development granted to the government of a local jurisdiction conditional upon the number of people with rural household registration who are granted permanent urban residency in that jurisdiction, while the basic data of population always wear a hazy veil. In this subject survey, it is difficult to obtain population data, and the scientific nature of data obtained is also questionable. In theory, the resident population data are generally collected by the statistical department according to the population sample survey, while the registered population can be collected by the public security department according to the household registration. Take Jiangxi as an example, there can be a total number of permanent residents and registered residents at the provincial level, but at the county level, it is difficult to tell where the population is moving. However, the total resident population of each district and city is actually the same as the total registered population every year, which makes people have to doubt the scientific nature of the data. In addition, all local governments are actively implementing the reform of the household registration system, that is, gradually abolishing the distinction between agricultural registered permanent residence and non-agricultural registered permanent residence, establishing a unified household registration system in urban and rural areas, and uniformly registering as permanent residence. In this context, whether the base number of "man-land" linkage can accurately reflect the true level of local acceptance of agricultural transferred population remains to be discussed. In particular, it is very likely that "citizenization" is simply equated with "household registration", and farmers’ household registration is moved to the city.

In addition, there are many technical difficulties in the specific implementation of the "man-land" linkage policy. For example, differential per capita land use standards are implemented, and the per capita new construction land standards are formulated by urban and rural construction departments with reference toOpinionsontheImplementationoftheMechanismofLinkingtheIncreaseofUrbanConstructionLandwiththeSettlementofAgriculturalTransferredPopulation. However, the specific implementation of this standard in urban and rural construction departments to ensure policy implementation is open to question. At the same time, the overall arrangement of the overall land use planning scale and the reasonable arrangement of the annual land use plan all need strong inter-departmental data to support. How to obtain the data and ensure that the calculation results are not subject to administrative intervention is the difficulty of the implementation of the "man-land-money" policy.

2.2Policyrecommendations

2.2.1Establishing financial transfer payment mechanism based on rural areas. The "man-land" linking policy has two dimensions: on the one hand, the population flowing into city is linked to urban construction land, that is, the settlement of agricultural transferred population is linked to new urban construction land; on the other hand, the population flowing out of rural areas is linked to the scale of rural construction land. For Jiangxi, an underdeveloped agricultural province, although there is a high imbalance between urban construction land and population, the phenomenon that urban land cannot be used intensively is obvious. However, at the present stage, the greater contradiction of "man-land" is still concentrated in the population outflow from the vast rural areas and the extensive utilization of rural construction land. At the national level, instead of using the urban new land planning quota as the policy incentive factor for "man-land" linkage (city offering land), it is better to start from the rural areas and establish a financial transfer payment mechanism. In other words, for the urban part of the underdeveloped areas, the "man-land" linkage policy is a false proposition, and the policy design itself is not dynamic enough. It is suggested that the next step is to put the incentive mechanism of the "man-land-money" policy on finance, not land.

2.2.2Working together to promote the construction of the man-land-money system. In order to realize the transfer of people to the city, the movement of the land with the people, and the money coming out of the land, it is not a matter just about land. To explore the "link between man and land", we need to consider it in a larger macro background, and we also need to promote a series of reforms on household registration and social security system. It is necessary to use the joint efforts of multiple policies to remove various barriers and create conditions for the citizenization of agricultural transferred population, so as to promote a new type of urbanization. At present, there is an urgent need to coordinate and promote the integration of "man-land" linkage and "man-money" linkage at the national level, and to construct the institutional framework of "man-land-money" at the top of the country, define the specific positions, specific responsibilities and specific work contents of various departments in the whole "man-land-money" ecological circle, so as to form a perfect policy ring and make the implementation of the system operable.

2.2.3Establishing a scientific monitoring system for the degree of citizenization. It is doubtful whether the urban household registration of agricultural population can really reflect people’s urbanization. It is suggested that the development and reform department or housing construction department should take the lead in establishing the index system and monitoring system of citizenization as soon as possible. The evaluation results of this index system should be used as the basis for land security in the land departments, so as to really ensure that the new type of urbanization is people-oriented and to promote people’s urbanization.

With the expansion of the size of the city, the real demand for construction land is not only based on the needs of the registered population. In addition to the registered population, the resident population also plays an important role in promoting the expansion of cities and the increase of construction land.

3 Conclusions

This paper holds that the policy of the trinity of man, land and money is to guide the population and gradually have a clear understanding of the process of urbanization under the new normal of China’s economic development, with people as the orientation, land as the carrier, money as the guarantee. It is the rational allocation and effective use of land and capital elements under the goal framework of "human urbanization", which makes up for the deficiency of the slow speed of "human urbanization", and makes the new urbanization healthy and sustainable. According to the general law of urbanization and the speed of the transfer of rural population to the city, under the guidance of the coordination theory of man-land relationship and the theory of urban-rural integration, as well as the guidance of planning, the amount and speed of the reduction of rural construction land and the increase of urban construction land can be determined. By adjusting the layout of urban and rural construction land and comprehensive land consolidation, we can use the quota of remaining construction land as a breakthrough in paid transfer between urban and rural areas after transformation, so as to achieve the policy of decline in the quantity and quality of urban and rural cultivated land to meet the demand for urban construction land. There are similarities and differences between man-land linkage and increase-decrease linkage in policy connotation, policy objectives, scope of application, implementation mechanism and so on. Among them, the man-land linkage is the extension and expansion of the increase-decrease linkage, and the increase-decrease linkage is a special case and extension of the cultivated land occupation-compensation balance policy.