Step out of the binary structure - Research on farmers' employment and entrepreneurship

Author: Deng Hongxun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: To date, nearly 100 million rural laborers across the country have participated in the large-scale transfer through cross-regional mobility and urban labor migration, infiltrating various sectors of urban industries and pioneering a market-based approach that integrates industrialization, urbanization, and the resolution of the "Three Rural Issues." Practice has shown that the pathways for rural labor transfer are primarily working and entrepreneurship. Work fosters entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship drives employment. Both job-seeking and entrepreneurship collectively propel rural labor transfer. From the strategic perspective of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, breaking the dual structure, and achieving modernization, we must recognize the significance of the current rural labor transfer, address the institutional barriers, innovate systems, improve the environment, and promote its healthy development. Under the central government's advocacy of the "people-centered, comprehensive, coordinated, and sustainable" scientific development concept, with particular attention to the "Three Rural Issues," Premier Wen Jiabao issued an important directive on April 10, 2004, to the China Rural Labor Resource Development Research Association, emphasizing the importance of promoting orderly rural labor transfer and addressing rural employment issues. He stressed the goal of increasing farmers' income to achieve the moderately prosperous society, proposed tasks such as providing diverse training forms to enhance the quality of migrant workers, facilitating and serving them in urban employment, and safeguarding their legitimate rights and interests. This serves as a great encouragement and inspiration to all institutions, organizations, and individuals dedicated to rural labor resource development in China.
Nowadays, it is increasingly clear that China's path to a moderately prosperous society and modernization requires the continued transition from a planned economy to a market economy and from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial society. In this process, the dominant factors determining development are industrialization and urbanization, while the primary challenges are the "Three Rural Issues." To transform the dual urban-rural structure and implement coordinated urban-rural development, it is essential to link these two aspects. There are many issues involved, such as market mechanisms and government macro-control, but the most critical is the transfer of surplus rural labor and rural populations to non-agricultural industries and urban areas. The transfer of rural surplus labor to non-agricultural industries and urban areas can be said to be both a matter of "people's livelihood"—affecting farmers' income growth—and a matter of "national interest"—related to achieving the moderately prosperous society and modernization goals.
In contemporary China, although the stage of addressing basic subsistence needs has been completed and the country has generally entered a moderately prosperous society, this prosperity remains low-level, incomplete, and unbalanced, with the primary issues concentrated on the "Three Rural Issues." The "Three Rural Issues" are linked to China's development from an agricultural nation to an industrialized and modernized one, and currently, the country still faces the "Five Lows": low resource allocation due to a high rural population density and limited land; narrow agricultural product markets and low prices; low employment rates among rural laborers; low rural incomes; and low rural purchasing power and material and cultural consumption levels. The most prominent issue is the low income and slow growth of rural incomes. Today, rural areas still have 30 million impoverished people, and 40% of the population has an annual income below 2,000 yuan, with the income gap between rural and urban residents widening.
The fundamental constraint on rural development is the insufficient employment of rural laborers, and without resolving the issue of where surplus labor goes, income growth cannot be fundamentally addressed. This issue is inherently long-term, involving social structure, systems, and development strategies, primarily the unresolved dual urban-rural economic structure. Only by resolving this issue can the Chinese nation achieve its great rejuvenation.
Several measures have been proposed to address the "Three Rural Issues." While seeking solutions around the "agricultural" aspect, more emphasis must be placed on industrialization and urbanization to gradually and orderly transfer the hundreds of millions of idle rural laborers to non-agricultural industries with higher comparative benefits and concentrate them in urban areas, transforming them into urban residents. A complete transformation of the dual economic structure into a modern unified economy—breaking free from the dual structure and achieving a profound social transformation—will be the fundamental direction of China's social and economic development in the coming decades.
Encouragingly, following the rise of rural enterprises in the 1980s, the "wave of migrant workers" emerged, and today, nearly 100 million rural laborers have participated in the large-scale transfer through cross-regional mobility and urban labor migration, infiltrating all sectors of urban industries and pioneering a market-based approach to integrate industrialization, urbanization, and the resolution of the "Three Rural Issues." Practice has shown that the pathways for rural labor transfer are primarily working and entrepreneurship. Work fosters entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship drives employment. Both job-seeking and entrepreneurship collectively propel rural labor transfer. We must view the current rural labor transfer and the public's activities in working and entrepreneurship from the strategic perspective of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, breaking the dual structure, and achieving modernization, recognize its significance, eliminate institutional barriers, innovate systems, improve the environment, and promote its healthy development.
Adapting to the needs of social transformation and rural labor transfer, in the late 1980s, the then-Central Rural Policy Research Office, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Agriculture, initiated the China Rural Labor Resource Development Research Association, which has now been in operation for 15 years and is now under the administration of the Development Research Center of the State Council. The association has united a group of theoretical and practical workers dedicated to serving the "Three Rural Issues" and researching solutions to rural population employment and transfer during the modernization process. It emphasizes social surveys and combines them with research on China's overall, strategic, and policy issues to explore the conditions, problems, and trends of rural labor resource development and transfer employment, providing advice to the state.
At the recommendation of the association, with approval from the State Council, the "Two Ministries and One Center" (Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Ministry of Agriculture, and Development Research Center of the State Council) launched the Rural Labor Resource Development and Employment Pilot Project, which has been in operation since 1991 and has expanded to more than 100 counties in eight provinces. The project has accumulated extensive experience. The association was among the first to recognize the phenomenon of job-seekers returning to their hometowns to start businesses. Since 1994, it has held an annual "Experience Exchange Meeting for Entrepreneurship Stars" every two years, paving the way for rural labor transfer and independent entrepreneurship. It has also collaborated with rural labor resource development research associations and promotion associations in Sichuan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei, Yunnan, and Guizhou provinces to promote the transfer of rural labor and entrepreneurship.
The China Rural Labor Resource Development Research Association adheres to the combination of theory and practice, achieving fruitful research results. The works included in this book represent the latest research findings since 1999. Their characteristics are: first, linking rural labor transfer and the "Three Rural Issues" to China's national conditions, building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and achieving long-term development, conducting three strategic studies: "China's Path to Breaking the Dual Structure," "China's Rural Labor Transfer Strategy," and "China's Rural Labor Transfer and Farmers' Urbanization Strategy." Second, there are numerous articles and survey reports reflecting hot and difficult issues in urban-rural reforms and rural labor transfer, as well as practical issues affecting migrant workers' interests, proposing innovative policy suggestions that have generated significant social response and played a beneficial role in leadership decision-making.
The book is divided into five parts. Part "Full Employment, Reducing Farmers, Enriching Farmers, and Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects" proposes that the key to increasing farmers' income lies in fully developing rural labor resources, explores coordinated urban-rural development and full employment of farmers in building a moderately prosperous society, analyzes the class attributes of migrant workers, and discusses the enhancement of human capital. The second part "China's Path to Breaking the Dual Structure and Rural Labor Transfer." The research report "China's Path to Breaking the Dual Structure" points out that a series of major practical issues in China today, such as the prominent "Three Rural Issues," a large urban-rural gap, severe lagging in rural labor transfer and urbanization, inefficient allocation of factors, and politically unequal treatment of farmers compared to urban residents, are all related to the dual structure. If not addressed promptly, they will have a significant impact on China's long-term development. The transformation from a dual economic structure to a modern unified economy is the fundamental direction of China's social and economic development in the coming decades. Breaking the dual structure requires implementing "three transformations" to drive the "Three Rural Issues" and achieving urban-rural integration. The third part "China's Rural Labor Transfer and Farmers' Urbanization Strategy" proposes that China's economic development and employment have entered a new stage where urbanization serves as the primary growth point for economic development and employment absorption, achieving reasonable alignment between rural and urban industries, developing the tertiary industry, accelerating the transfer of rural labor to urban areas, and speeding up the process of transforming farmers into urban residents. This will mark the third liberation of farmers. The characteristics of the third liberation of rural labor are the breakthrough of the dual structure between rural and urban areas. It also proposes that in the long run, sustained economic growth and modernization depend on the transfer of surplus rural labor to non-agricultural industries, especially to urban areas. The transition from a planned economy to a socialist market economy also requires a corresponding shift in urban-rural relations—moving from restricting farmers' entry into cities to actively attracting them, which is a historic transformation affecting the future of national modernization. The fourth part studies rural labor transfer in the form of cross-regional mobility and urban labor migration from the perspectives of systems and policies. Some articles analyze the institutional barriers hindering the transfer of rural labor to urban areas and the transformation of farmers into urban residents, the policy changes from restricting and regulating to accommodating, serving, guiding, and promoting farmers entering cities, as well as the institutional innovation and policy adjustments that need to be addressed. Some articles discuss sensitive social issues, such as forced detention and repatriation of migrant workers in mobile employment, violations of migrant workers' rights by employers, and migrant worker schools in urban-rural areas, reflecting the situation and proposing corresponding policy measures. The fifth part introduces the conditions of rural labor mobility and transfer in provinces such as Jiangsu, Guizhou, and Yunnan, providing training and services for rural labor transfer and entrepreneurship. At the end of the book, there are research materials on several issues related to rural labor resource development.