Thoughts on perfecting the dual structure system of urban and rural areas

The urban-rural fringe is a regional concept with China characteristics. It exists because of the political attribute of China-the dual management system of urban and rural areas, and the problems involved are far more complicated than ordinary pure urban areas or pure agricultural areas. Therefore, to break the "dual structure" of urban and rural areas as a breakthrough, to deeply study the "pathogenic" roots of this area, and to explore effective ways to solve social problems in this area with the reform idea of coordinated urban and rural development will not only help improve the modern management level of Beijing, but also have important reference significance for areas that will realize urbanization in the future. ?

Urban-rural fringe

A "pain zone" with long-standing problems?

(1) What is the concept of the location of Beijing's urban-rural fringe?

Beijing's urban-rural junction can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense: compared with Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chongwen and Xuanwu, Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai and Shijingshan are urban-rural junction areas in a broad sense. But in fact, the area with typical urban-rural mixed population characteristics is the ring area near the Fourth Ring Road, where the boundary between street offices and township (town) administrative areas is unclear, which is the narrow urban-rural fringe area we focus on. It is a suburb where urban industry and residential areas are constantly spreading, which makes the suburb which was mainly rural rapidly evolve into a special space with both urban and rural characteristics. ?

(2) Regional social problems have not been cured for a long time, and they have become the intersection of various contradictions and conflicts during the social transformation period.

If people drive around some urban-rural fringe areas along the Fourth Ring Road, it is not difficult to find a completely different scene from urban high-rise buildings and rural pastoral scenery: simple facilities, narrow space, and privately built houses have destroyed the original rural planning pattern; Garbage residue can be seen everywhere; Streets and lanes are narrow and uneven; It is dusty in windy days, muddy in rainy days, and the dry toilet smells bad. The deterioration of the living environment has made the regional social security environment "worse": almost all the 33 high-risk areas listed and supervised in the city are concentrated in the urban-rural fringe, and drug abuse, drug trafficking and vicious cases have been repeatedly banned (beaten); Rental housing in this area, especially illegal rental housing, has become a place to shelter evil people and shelter evil practices ... No wonder some reporters use the word "urban bad edge" to describe the circular zone in the urban-rural fringe. ?

As a companion of urban expansion, the problem of urban-rural fringe has a long history, which can generally be traced back to the mid-1970s. However, at that time, the number of agricultural land requisitioned by the state was limited, and the geographical scope and social impact of the problem were small. After the reform and opening up, the speed of urban construction in Beijing has changed with each passing day, and the amount of land acquisition in suburbs has doubled. According to statistics, by the end of 2002, there were only 6.5438+0.28 million hectares of cultivated land in Chaozhou, Haihe, Fengshi and Shijiazhuang, which was 3/4 less than the 52.3 million hectares in the early days of reform and opening up. However, the political system reform lags behind the speed of economic development, which makes the "dual" social management system unable to cope with many social problems brought about by the rapid population flow in this area. The accumulation of economic and social contradictions has made many problems difficult to return. The urban-rural fringe has become a headache for the government and a "pain zone" for the people.

"Dual social structure" is an obstacle.

"Dual social structure" is a general expression of the relationship and pattern between urban and rural areas in China. It refers to the separation of urban and rural areas in the whole social structure system. Urban society is one yuan and rural society is another yuan. "Dual social structure" also exists in developed countries, but the scope is very small. In developing countries, the "dual social structure" not only exists in the economy, but also permeates social politics, social life and ideological culture, as in China. ? (a) the manifestation of China's "dual social structure"?

China's "dual social structure" includes 14 specific forms, including the household registration system that divides urban and rural areas according to the classification of agriculture and non-agricultural registered permanent residence. Its core content is to identify the agricultural and non-agricultural population and implement the policy of differential treatment in public management and social security, that is, the non-agricultural population enjoys higher social treatment than the agricultural population. As a result of the social division between urban and rural areas, not only the social development pattern of attaching importance to cities and neglecting rural areas has been formed, but also the two major interest groups of workers and peasants under the condition of unequal interests. The problem of urban-rural fringe arises from this. ?

(B) urban and rural "dual" social management system on the urban-rural fringe management constraints.

The regional characteristics of urban-rural fringe are "three intersections", namely, urban-rural intersection, agricultural (human) residence (human) intersection, and street-township administrative intersection. This "crossing" poses a severe challenge to the current social management model of urban-rural division at the grass-roots level in China. ?

The grass-roots social management mode in Beijing, like other places in China, is based on the Regulations on Household Registration Management in People's Republic of China (PRC) promulgated in June 1958+0. This is a "household registration territorial management" model characterized by fixation, restriction and urban-rural division, with social control management as the means and household registration ownership as the principle. Its connotation is: under the condition of strictly restricting the transformation of agricultural population into non-agricultural population, urban political power organizations represented by street offices are responsible for managing and serving non-agricultural residents in Beijing, and rural political power organizations represented by township governments are responsible for managing and serving villagers with agricultural household registration in Beijing. In the closed management system of urban and rural areas, street and township governments perform the social management functions of self-managed population, including family planning, employment, subsistence allowances, special care, medical and health care, party member and retirees management, and social security management. ?

As a product of planned economy, the current household registration territorial management model corresponds to a relatively static population situation. When the large-scale population movement breaks this balance, it is followed by the management collision caused by the friction between the old system and the new situation, which is highlighted in three aspects:

1? Urban and rural management areas overlap, responsibilities are unclear, and administrative management is difficult to reach the designated position?

Before the reform and opening up, in Beijing, except for the four central urban areas, the boundaries between urban and rural areas were clear on the maps of four suburban areas, that is, according to the zoning, urban and rural administrative areas rarely crossed or overlapped. However, since the reform and opening up, with the continuous extension of urban areas, the state has decentralized land acquisition for non-contiguous construction, gradually blurring the geographical boundaries between cities and rural areas. Rural boundaries have been broken by many street offices newly built due to the increase of non-agricultural population, and it is not uncommon for several police stations or towns to "enclave" farmers within the management boundaries of street offices. The boundaries of township administrative areas are unclear, and the public security management circle overlaps with the streets and township administrative circles, resulting in many difficulties in township administrative work. The phenomena of mutual wrangling, mutual shirking and mutual competition for profits occur from time to time, and repeated management and unmanned management coexist. As a result, some streets, towns and units in the "three-no-care" areas have poor city appearance and sanitation, many illegal buildings, piles of garbage and dregs, and high incidence of criminal cases, which has become a "long-standing problem". The social frictions and conflicts caused by the mixed residence of registered population and floating population in Beijing are also increasing. ?

2? Will the management of floating population from other countries get twice the result with half the effort because of imperfect system and inaccurate positioning?

The large scale, high density and lack of management of floating population in urban-rural fringe have always been a major problem for governments at all levels. Considering the pressure of population size in Beijing at this stage, under the protection of the existing household registration territorial management policy, the government has long positioned the management of floating population as control and preventive management, focusing on public security management and rectification, which is the embodiment of this idea. Because the floating population is not included in the management of the permanent population, its management organization, as a "permanent temporary organization", has been separated from the existing urban management system and operates independently. On the one hand, affected by occupational limitations and collaborative work methods, the work of the foreign population management office is more manifested in the independent operation of the functional bureaus, and the work efficiency is halved; On the other hand, the shortage of funds and personnel makes managers feel overwhelmed. As a result, the total number of floating population in the urban-rural junction has not been reduced due to strict administrative control, and preventive management or infringement has not been corrected in time, which has made the floating population resistant to society and even boycotted actions, increasing the difficulty of government management. ?

3? Village Committee organizations are in a discrete state, and rural grassroots social management is weak?

As a grass-roots social organization in rural areas, villagers' committees are an important part of China's political system, and play an important core role in organizing villagers to conduct self-management, self-education and self-service. However, with the shrinking cultivated land area and the increasing population of administrative villages in the urban-rural fringe, the existing village committees waiting for the merger and the establishment of neighborhood committees have already fallen apart. On the one hand, most members of village committees in many administrative villages are farmers, who have changed their status and are no longer enthusiastic about public affairs in their villages; On the other hand, the withdrawal of villages means that they will face new career choices (in Beijing's urban-rural fringe, village Committee members are a profession, and their income level is generally 3-5 times higher than that of ordinary villagers), which makes it difficult for them to concentrate on the work of village committees. In addition, due to the unbalanced interests of some administrative villages in the disposal of collective assets, the contradictions between cadres and the masses continue, which also discredits the village committees. As a result, the combination of the looseness of rural social organizations and the absence of government administration has made the social problems in some areas in the urban-rural fringe increasingly serious. ?

"Etiology" analysis?

Since the crux of the problem in the urban-rural fringe lies in the "dual social structure", wouldn't the problem be solved by changing the township government into a street office, canceling the organizational system of village committees, forming new neighborhood committees and changing the rural management system into an urban management system? Obviously, the problem is not that simple. ?

1? The rural urbanization policy is not matched, which leads to the slow transition process of street, township and village residential system?

As we all know, the essential difference between rural grass-roots management system and urban grass-roots management system is that the former has economic management function, while the latter does not. Because rural grass-roots society is the unity of production and life, rural organizations not only do a good job in social management and public services within their jurisdiction, but also undertake the functions of organizing regional fiscal revenue and managing regional economic organizations. The former works around the latter, which is a typical "trinity" management model of administration, society and economy. In the urban grass-roots society, after the management system reform of "separating government from enterprise, separating government from society, and separating government from affairs", from the end of the 20th century, street offices and community neighborhood committees no longer engaged in business activities, and their focus shifted to urban public management and community service, which is a working idea of separating government from enterprise. Therefore, the premise of the reform of street, township and village residence system is to clear assets and verify capital, do a good job in the disposal of rural collective assets and realize the separation of government from enterprise, but this work is not progressing smoothly. ?

Theoretically speaking, the rural management system is a management mode corresponding to agricultural production activities, but many villages, teams and even towns in urban-rural fringe areas stopped engaging in agricultural production and management activities many years ago, and have the ability to withdraw township governments and build street offices; The conditions for merging village committees and building neighborhood committees, but due to policy reasons, the fixed assets left over from the history of merging villages and teams have not yet found a satisfactory disposal plan; Or because there is no policy basis, the huge off-balance-sheet assets in rural collective assets cannot enter the evaluation, which may greatly reduce the effect of asset disposal; Of course, it does not rule out that some township and village collective asset managers delay asset disposal for their personal interests ... In short, various factors have led to the discussion on the collective asset disposal scheme of these rural grassroots organizations waiting for transformation for a long time. ?

The problem does not stop there. In the past, the institutional defects of employment and social security policies for people who moved from rural areas to non-rural areas not only led people who moved from rural areas to non-rural areas to repeatedly ask for the right to distribute their original collective assets in the form of petitions and complaints when they encountered difficulties in production and life that they could not solve, which seriously affected social stability and had a great negative impact on the next work of moving from rural areas to non-rural areas: many farmers clearly expressed their reluctance to move from rural areas and were worried. The income level of farmers in this area is generally high. In addition to the wage income of working in township enterprises, there are still some families operating income, and the annual income of farmers in some villages even exceeds that of urban workers. However, not to mention the decline in wage income caused by the risk of re-employment, only from the change of living consumption structure, the new consumption expenditure is enough to make their actual living standards drop to a higher level. These expenses include utilities (many village teams with better conditions in the suburbs of Beijing provide villagers with domestic water and electricity free of charge), house purchase expenses, extra expenses or supplementary expenses after the transformation of old villages (such as property management fees and heating fees) and so on. As a result, in the gathering place of floating population, more and more farmers choose to build and rent illegal houses privately as a way to make up for the loss of interests brought by urbanization. Although this result objectively led to the deterioration of the living environment and the confusion of public order, its motivation was beyond reproach. ?

The problems caused by the institutional defects in the disposal of rural collective assets, the re-employment of farmers and non-farmers, and social security have never been fundamentally solved. Villages and towns without arable land and even farmers have to keep the original administrative system to solve the remaining problems, thus affecting the process of the transformation of the township system. Five regional offices with dual management functions, such as Datun and Taiyanggong in Chaoyang District, failed to withdraw from their villages and build streets in 10. ?

2? Under the dual financial system in urban and rural areas, street residents and rural administrative organizations cannot accept the institutional arrangement of increasing public management expenditure?

The arrangement of public management funds in China has always been a "dual-track system" adapted to the "dual social structure" in urban and rural areas. As far as the grass-roots financial system is concerned, the sources of funds for urban and rural public management are different: all expenditures for public management of street offices and community neighborhood committees are backed by public finance, and public products are paid with special funds; The public management expenses of township governments and villagers' committees mainly come from farmers themselves, and most of them belong to the accumulation of their surplus labor except for some tax rebates paid by township enterprises. According to a survey, about two-thirds of the fiscal year expenditure of a town in Beijing's urban-rural fringe comes from rural collective economic organizations, but this part of public management, especially public facilities construction expenditure is not entirely used to serve local villagers, and the relocated households and floating population living here also enjoy it. According to the provisions of China's financial system, the funds needed for urbanization management should be allocated by the government's public finance according to the budget. For these villages that are self-sufficient in management expenses but should be managed according to urban standards, the "spillover" of public service expenditure is undoubtedly equivalent to the deprivation of rural collective assets. In addition, the establishment, establishment and funding of urban and rural administrative institutions are not determined by the number of residents, but by the proportion of registered population and number of people in the jurisdiction. Therefore, under the framework of "dual management" of urban-rural division, whether it is street residents or rural organizations, assuming social management responsibilities and providing public services in the areas where farmers and residents, Beijing registered population and floating population live together in the urban-rural junction means paying extra management costs, which is the real reason why street and township administrative organizations shirk management responsibilities in the case of unclear geographical boundaries and unequal rights and obligations. ?

3? Urban scale control and humanized management of floating population have become a pair of contradictions that are difficult to resolve.

It is an indisputable fact that the urban-rural fringe is the gathering place of floating population in Beijing. According to the statistics of the "Five-Year Plan" in 2000, 1.538 million non-Beijing residents, accounting for 62.4% of the total floating population in the city, live in Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai and Shijingshan District, accounting for 24. 1% of the permanent population of 6.389 million in the jurisdiction. This group is usually regarded as the maker of "urban bad edges". For the time being, no matter how much responsibility they should bear for the problem of urban-rural junction, it is why they bear such "charges"! Everyone recognizes that the floating population is an indispensable force in Beijing's urban construction, but it is also a vulnerable group in Beijing. Objectively speaking, their living environment in the urban-rural fringe is sympathetic, and there are many reasons why they can't do it. If our government and citizens give them more humanistic care and substantial help, I believe that the vast majority of floating population will not deliberately destroy the beautiful environment of the city. However, it is difficult for the government to determine that Beijing's urban population has exceeded the carrying capacity of existing water resources. Under the state of rigid household registration management in Beijing, the object of population control can only be the floating population. Under the current policy environment, the floating population is still increasing by hundreds of thousands every year. If the service consciousness is strengthened, the growth of population size will make the government miserable. Therefore, the indecision of decision-making caused by dilemma and the management mode of treating the symptoms but not the root cause are the important reasons why it is difficult to achieve results in social environmental governance in urban-rural fringe. ?

It is the common fault of China's "dual social structure" that is intertwined with the characteristics of Beijing's population size limiting factors, which constitutes the long-standing problem of Beijing's urban-rural fringe. ?