How will the housing problem in rural China be solved in the future?

A considerable number of people in China's cities and towns need to buy new homes or replace their homes to improve their living conditions; and in the next few decades, 500 million to 600 million rural people will move to cities. , and permanently moved to live in towns. Under China's national conditions of having more people and less land, how to solve the world's largest housing demand requires serious thinking and research and the formulation of countermeasures to solve it.

Things to solve China’s urban housing problem

The idea is a framework and directional plan to solve the housing problem.

First, in a country with many people and little land, we must correctly handle the relationship between land for food security and land for urban residents’ residential needs. While reducing the rate of farmland abandonment, advancing agricultural technology, and promoting large-scale agricultural operations, including importing some agricultural products, we will also increase the supply of residential land to meet the increasing housing needs of urban residents and new immigrants. The supply of residential land is too small, resulting in an imbalance between housing supply and housing demand. In essence, the housing supply cannot meet the needs of the majority of urban residents and new immigrants. In form, housing prices are too high, and they rise year by year, exceeding the growth of residents' income. This makes residents unable to purchase housing. If cultivated land is not well protected, food prices will rise too fast, which is not a good thing. House prices are rising rapidly, making residents unable to afford housing, which is also detrimental to social stability.

Second, it is necessary to control the expansion of land area occupied by rural residences, actively promote urbanization, and increase the residential land for urban residents. Since the reform and opening up, village land has increased from more than 70 million acres in 1978 to more than 27,000 acres, while the rural population has decreased by more than 60 million people; urban land has increased from more than 20 million acres to more than 70 million acres, but 4 More than 100 million people. Therefore, the overall direction to solve China's residential housing problem should be to strictly control rural residential land, increase urban residential land, and actively promote the removal of small villages and merge them with large villages, and the removal of villages and merge them with towns, so as to sort out more land resources to adapt to agricultural modernization. and the needs of urbanization.

Third, we must increase residents’ income so that the growth rate of residents’ income exceeds the increase rate of housing prices and enhance residents’ ability to purchase housing. The key is to encourage urban residents and new immigrants to start businesses, increase enterprises, thereby increase employment, increase social demand for labor, increase the middle-income population formed by entrepreneurship, and reduce the number of people falling into poverty due to unemployment. And due to the large demand for labor, Boost wage growth and enhance residents' ability to pay for housing.

Fourth, control and stabilize housing prices to make them compatible with the income growth and purchasing power of urban residents and new immigrants. Housing prices are different from stock prices. Although they are asset prices in statistics and are not included in the consumer price index, they have dual properties of investment and consumption. One-third of residents' consumption expenditures are used for housing. Therefore, the central government's macro-control should regard stabilizing the housing price level and making it compatible with the income level of urban residents as its important work content.

Fifth, the housing needs of urban residents and new immigrants should be classified and solved according to different income groups and different stages. First, renting and purchasing residences form a reasonable allocation. Some new urban residents, such as those who have moved from rural areas to the city, those who have graduated from college and are newly employed, those who need to move frequently between regions for work, etc., initially or often mainly rent. However, considering the traditions of the Chinese nation, most urban residents, for example, more than 70%, should still own their own homes. It may be that during the stage of large-scale transfer of rural population to cities, the proportion of renting will be higher, and as income increases With the improvement of urbanization and the advancement of urbanization, the proportion of people buying houses to live in should gradually increase. The second is to combine government support with residents’ own solutions. Some middle- and high-income urban residents, including some with future income expectations, should raise their own funds to purchase their homes, including mortgage loans. For some low-income people, the government can solve the problem through low-cost land supply, cooperative housing construction, affordable housing, and low-rent public housing. What needs to be pointed out is that it must be consistent with the government's financial capabilities and compressed within an appropriate scope to avoid becoming a heavy burden for government expenditures, and ultimately failing to achieve what is intended and breaking the trust of the people.

Sixth, we must find a Chinese-style path to explore and solve the housing problems of new immigrants in urbanization. Judging from the current living styles of new immigrants from rural areas to cities in China, they include workshop-style living, collective dormitory living, and simple rental-style living in suburbs and urban villages. The disadvantage of this model is that a considerable number of farmers cannot permanently move to cities and towns and return to their hometowns when they are old. The rural population may age very quickly. In addition, a considerable number of families have their spouses and children separated for a long time, and the population flows violently between urban and rural areas. . This is different from the model of East Asian countries and the model of Latin America and South Asia. In the former, there were certain slums during the process of rural population transfer to cities, which were later transformed by the government; in the latter, large-scale slums were formed due to the pressure of the land privatization system and the slum vote bins of the universal suffrage system.

What kind of path will China take? Can it get rid of the slum "trap" in Latin America and South Asia? On the premise of preventing the large-scale or even continuous spread and solidification of slums, appropriate tolerance should be given to residential areas, urban villages, and suburban rentals in terms of living style. We should tolerate itinerant vendors and small shops in terms of people's livelihood, and solve the housing problems of China's new immigrants moving to cities step by step, by stages, by levels and in various ways.

System reform to solve the housing problem of urban residents

From the perspective of the system to solve the housing problem of urban residents and new immigrants, the key is to correctly handle the role of government and society in solving housing problems. In a country with too many people and low per capita economic development, in order to form a reasonable housing price-to-income ratio, the first step is to mobilize the enthusiasm of residents to buy and rent houses to solve their residential consumption, and the second step is to mobilize the power of the government. to cooperate. This requires adjustments and reforms to some systems.

First, reform the current government's bidding, auction and listing system for land supply to form a competitive supply market to curb the skyrocketing land prices and gradually reduce the price level of land. In any case, houses must be built on land. In addition to the balanced relationship between land supply and demand, land prices are also closely related to the supply method of land. An increase in land prices will inevitably promote an increase in housing prices. This is an inherent law of the economy that cannot be changed or denied by anyone. Therefore, the most critical thing to stabilize and reduce housing prices is to reform the current government monopoly land supply market structure into a competitive land supply market. The main reform contents include: first, narrowing the scope of non-public welfare land requisition, collective land can enter the construction market as long as it conforms to the construction plan; second, changing the time of bidding and auctioning and centralized listing supply, to provide land transferors with Information is registered at the land exchange for a long time and can be traded anytime and anywhere; thirdly, information such as land, real estate, homesteads, etc. is registered by one department of the county-level government, one department confirms the rights, and the other department issues the certificate. A county-level real estate center is established to transfer the information. Registration information of land in county and municipal real estate exchanges; fourth, hierarchical county-level real estate trading centers, central city real estate trading centers, provincial real estate trading centers, national regional real estate trading centers, and even national real estate trading centers should be established Real estate trading centers at all levels are networked together, allowing land and housing suppliers and demanders to match quotations at any time. This will reduce the cost of information search, make supply and demand information sensitive and symmetrical, and form a competitive real estate market on both supply and demand sides.

Second, reform the fiscal and taxation system, adjust the fiscal and taxation relationship between the central and local governments, expand the financing authority of local governments, and change the current land finance pattern in which government revenue is unsustainable but housing prices are raised. The first is to adjust the tax sharing ratio between the central and local governments, increase the proportion of local finance in tax revenue, and change the pattern in which the central finance mainly relies on taxes, while local finance mainly relies on land sales and fees; the second is to change the pattern of land transfers that last for decades at a time. The proposed system includes value-added tax for land transactions, property tax, land tax for excessive land occupation, etc., so that local fiscal revenue related to land is sustainable; the third is to amend the current budget law to allow local governments to issue bonds for construction projects, using For supporting funding sources such as residential roads, water supply and drainage, hospitals and schools, the repayment of principal and interest is included in the general fiscal budget, so that the cost of public facilities in residential areas is borne by the government, reducing the shared cost of housing.

Third, if rural collective land, including farmers’ homesteads and public welfare land, is expropriated by the state, full compensation must be paid; non-public welfare land directly enters the construction market, is exchanged at equivalent market prices, and is Reasonable distribution among the state, developers, land users and residents. Farmers' farmland and homesteads can be transferred, transferred, leased, mortgaged, etc., transforming farmers' land from means of production into assets, asset realization and replacement, helping farmers start businesses and buy houses in cities and towns.

Fourth, we must reform the current entrepreneurial system, encourage entrepreneurship, increase employment, increase residents’ income, and enhance their ability to pay for housing. Relax the registration threshold for small businesses, simplify registration procedures and steps, and cancel pre-approval for registration in many fields; cancel various industrial and commercial annual inspections of enterprises, and annual inspection fees will be borne by government departments and administrative institutions that conduct annual inspections; clean up Various government documents and laws and regulations will significantly reduce the number of approval items and eliminate various rent-seeking settings; we will be more liberal with mobile vendors and farmers engaged in small business and hawkers in cities and towns, and implement a more tolerant and flexible management system; centralize and unify and reduce approval, licensing, supervision and law enforcement, strengthen post-event management, and relax prior access; build a government administrative service hall, implement one-stop office, popularize e-government, and truly realize the openness and sunshine of government affairs; clean up various fees and cancel Some government departments and administrative institutions have a two-line system of revenue and expenditure. Their institutions, personnel, and official expenses are all paid by fiscal appropriations, and government departments and institutions that charge fees are not allowed to be established; vigorously develop small private banking institutions to enable entrepreneurship and small businesses have a relaxed financing environment. In short, it makes urban residents and new immigrants into cities rich so that they can have money to buy houses.

Introducing relevant policies to solve the housing problems of urban residents

To solve the housing problems of Chinese urban residents and new immigrants from rural areas to cities, a series of supporting policies need to be introduced.

First, treat houses with small property rights differently.

Taking into account the reality that our country has more people and less land, as well as the cost and difficulty of future reclamation, urban residents should be prohibited from purchasing homestead land in rural areas; however, in large villages, small market towns and small towns with a population of about 5,000, collective land must be directly transferred to The residential construction market is to develop small property rights housing to lower the housing cost threshold for farmers' urbanization. In the construction of new rural areas, the state's financial resources should focus on supporting the construction of infrastructure and other supporting facilities where farmers are concentrated in large villages, small market towns and small towns.

Second, the government’s role in solving housing problems. The first is to encourage cooperative housing construction. Many European countries encourage residents to set up residential construction cooperatives. The government provides land at lower prices and exempts some taxes. Residents in need of housing form residential construction and consumer cooperatives to build their own houses, which greatly reduces the cost of housing. Second, the government builds affordable housing and sells it to low- and middle-income families. When building affordable housing, the government lowers the price of land and exempts and exempts some taxes and fees, thereby lowering the price of housing to adapt to the purchasing power of low- and middle-income groups. The third is to build low-rent public housing. For low-income and particularly difficult families who cannot afford to buy housing, on the one hand, we provide housing subsidies for low-income families, and on the other hand, we provide low-rent public housing for them to live in.

Third, levy property tax. Reforming the one-time collection of transfer fees for decades into a tax on real estate can reduce the cost of housing development and stabilize the price level of housing; tax parts that exceed the per capita area, multiple suites, villas, etc., or even impose a progressive tax , helps to curb profitable speculative investment in housing, thereby eliminating the rise in housing prices driven by speculation; levying a housing tax will increase the cost of housing ownership and idleness, and will also help eliminate the phenomenon of idle housing, so that scarce land and housing resources can be fully utilized be utilized.

Fourth, the state has introduced policies that are conducive to conserving and reorganizing land resources, such as evicting villages and relocating villagers in towns to live together.

For villagers who move from a small village to a large village, or who give up their residential land and move into multi-story housing, especially those who abandon their residential land and reclaim it as farmland, in addition to reasonable expropriation and compensation for their land, an additional subsidy should be paid. Encourage their behavior of saving land resources for the country