A migrant worker inspects rebar at a construction site in Shanghai. Photo: TUCHONG

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Chinese modernization hinges on deftly handling the relationships between industry and agriculture, and between urban and rural areas. As it’s stated in the Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization (hereinafter referred to as the “Resolution”), “integrated urban-rural development is essential to Chinese modernization.” Urban-rural integration has been regarded as the goal for managing the above-mentioned relationships. This differs significantly from many countries that take industrialization and urbanization as the development objectives of modernization.

Status quo of urbanization 

At present, China faces the major issue of coordinating the development of industry and agriculture, and of urban and rural areas, in the process of modernization. After more than three decades of rapid development, the urbanization rate of the permanent resident population reached 66.16% in 2023, as the country entered the second half of its urbanization drive. However, the urbanization rate for permanent residents was nearly 20 percentage points higher than the rate of urbanization for registered local residents. 

It is roughly estimated that nearly 300 million people are excluded from the household registration, or hukou, system of their permanent urban residence, living in a floating status. They are what we dub as “floating working groups,” or “migrant workers.” 

The massive migrant population is not a passing phenomenon. Instead, it took shape in the 1990s and has since continued to grow. Most migrants left villages in the central and western parts of China and moved to cities in the eastern region for work, constituting the backbone of Chinese industrial workers and the main force of the “world factory.” 

Their children and elderly parents are typically “left behind” in villages or towns in central and western China, and most migrant workers retain contracted land and housing in rural areas. Going to work in cities without obtaining urban residency is the primary reason for the quick growth of the migrant population. This has formed a unique demographic phenomenon in Chinese modernization while also causing wide regional disparities. 

On one hand, cities in eastern China are “overcrowded.” In some industrially developed urban areas, migrants far outnumber local residents. Due to a lack of hukou and privately owned housing in these cities, as well as high mobility, they have posed great difficulties to the provision of public services and social governance in cities. 

On the other hand, many counties in the central and western regions are “hollowing out” due to massive population outflows, where industrial development and upgrade falls short of workforce, businesses and the service sector are in dire need of consumers, and urban development faces increasingly severe trouble. 

According to the seventh national population census, the domestic migration trend and model remained stable and showed no clear sign of change. This has invited tremendous challenges to altering China’s development landscape marked by imbalances between eastern and western areas and to narrowing regional gaps. 

Essence of urban-rural integration 

In light of the development course, the approach of relying heavily on big cities, enhancing urban accommodation capacities in the eastern region, and facilitating migrant workers to settle and obtain urban hukous is inadequate to resolve existing problems. The fundamental problem lies in that if migrant workers are granted urban residency in the eastern region, their children and even their elderly parents in central and western China should also move to these regions. This is beyond the migration capacities of these vulnerable groups, and far too much for cities in the eastern region to accommodate and bear.

 

Data suggests that the total number of trans-provincial migrant workers is at least at 60 million. If their elderly parents and children are factored in, the figure would hit nearly 200 million. If all of these people are relocated to eastern China, settlements of low-income groups and even slums will unavoidably emerge, which will work against the national strategic goal of achieving the large-scale development of the western region and the rise of the central region. 

The Resolution’s emphasis on integrated urban-rural development as an essential requirement to Chinese modernization responds precisely to this problem. It is a far-sighted development strategy that will coordinate progress among new industrialization, new urbanization, and all-around rural revitalization, taking into account the relationships between industry and agriculture, between urban and rural areas, and between different regions. 

Currently, about 300 million migrant workers engage in non-agricultural industries, approximately 120 million of whom live in the countryside and 180 million reside in urban areas, out of their hometown. Settling this huge population alongside their family members (children and elderly parents) is a critical issue in China’s development process. This is not simply about granting them urban hukous and helping them settle down in cities as soon as possible. Rather, it is about enabling the groups to have choices to make, switch freely, and flow in an orderly manner between industry and agriculture, between urban and rural areas, and between regions. 

Previous development experience indicates that migrant workers are a key source of vitality and flexibility for the Chinese economy and also an important guarantee of social stability in China. Integrated urban-rural development is essentially to remove institutional barriers which impede the flow of production factors between cities and the countryside and promote equal exchanges and two-way factor flows, so as to narrow the disparities between the two and advance their shared prosperity and development.

Putting migrant workers first

Production factors for urban and rural development can be categorized into “people,” “land,” and “funds.” Impeded or unidirectional flows and excessive concentration of these factors will result in a new urban-rural dichotomy. To smooth out the flow, an objective understanding of the relationships between these factors is crucial. 

Some scholars focus on land and funds, arguing that the factor flow will be unblocked, and urban-rural integration will be achieved as long as the land and fund allocation systems are unified. This view stresses the flow and distribution of land and funds only, neglecting “people” and attempting to arrange “people” through measures on land and funds. 

Integrated urban-rural development on this basis overlooks migrant workers’ role as a bond of industry and agriculture, of cities and the countryside, and of different regions. The resultant cities will not be cities of the people, and revitalized rural areas will not be areas for rural residents. Eventually, the shared prosperity and development of urban and rural areas will become an empty promise.  

Integrated urban-rural development, centering around the people, or migrant workers, requires appropriately addressing the relationships among human, land, and financial resources, putting migrants’ will and rights first. The Resolution has defined the rights of migrant workers, including the rights to obtain household registration and access basic public services in their place of permanent residence, and ensuring eligible people who have moved to cities from rural areas enjoy the same rights as registered local residents with regard to social insurance, housing support, and access to compulsory education for their children living with them. Moreover, the lawful land rights and interests of former rural residents who now hold permanent urban residency, as well as their rights to contract rural land, to use their rural residential land, and to share in the proceeds from rural collective undertakings, will be protected. In addition, efforts will be made to explore avenues to facilitate voluntary, paid transfers of these rights.

In short, migrant workers will enjoy two types of rights, one in cities and the other in the countryside. Whether they have held urban hukous or not, rural people are entitled to both. This policy is critical to refining the institutions and mechanisms for urban-rural integration. Migrant workers will not only have dual identities—industrial and agricultural, and urban and rural, but more importantly, they migrate as family members, instead of independent individuals. 

Migrant workers leave their hometown to make money, chiefly for the benefit of their families. At present, they mostly have two or three “homes:” a temporary home in the place of employment, a newly built home in the county seat of their hometown, and an original home in their rural hometown. 

Take middle-aged migrant workers as an example. Some of them have temporary housing in the place of employment in eastern China, either the dormitory of the plant where they work or cheap rental housing. Meanwhile, they have a home in rural areas, where their elderly parents look after and foster their minor children. Most migrant workers, though in other locales, care deeply about their hometown. Normally they choose not to bring their children or parents to the cities where they work, first because of high living costs. Another reason is that their household registration status makes it difficult for their children to enroll in urban school systems.   

These migrant workers with two homes are the largest medium-low-income and disadvantaged group in Chinese society and are pivotal to the national strategy of common prosperity. The aim of integrated urban-rural development is to safeguard this group’s rights of the two types, ensuring that they receive urban public services tied to their urban residences and rural treatments in their village homes. The countryside belongs to rural people, yet cities should also embrace them unconditionally. Only when this group enjoys the two types of rights and treatments will they be free to give their full attention to work, thereby contributing to the vigor and stability of the Chinese economy and society. 

Safeguarding the rights of rural people is the premise for integrated urban-rural development, but it’s not enough. The shared prosperity and development of urban and rural areas demands the creation of a favorable environment for migrant workers to live and work. People-centered urban-rural integration suggests that rural people are the subject of living and working, which differs fundamentally from urbanization in the general sense. 

To cultivate a workable and livable environment for urban-rural integration and construct a mechanism for healthy interaction among industrial upgrade, population aggregation, and urban development, counties in the eastern, central, and western regions across China shoulder common missions. One mission is to continue to promote the integration of infrastructure and ensure equal access to public services, building counties into production and living circles characterized by prosperous industries, convenient transportation, sound services, and an ecologically livable environment. Another, more important, mission is to realize rural revitalization across the board, to forge villages into livable “homes” for rural residents and “paradises” for urban residents to relax and foster good health. 

Zhou Feizhou is a professor and dean of the Department of Sociology at Peking University. 

Edited by CHEN MIRONG