On May 21, Zheng Xinli, former deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), gave a keynote speech on the theme of "Giving Full Play to the Important Role of the Top 100 Cities and Urban Agglomerations in Driving High-Quality Development" at the Seminar on the Strategies for the Comprehensive Development of China's 100 Strongest Cities in 2021 held in Beijing.

The following is the full text of the speech.

Ladies and gentlemen, comrades, good afternoon! I would like to focus on giving full play to the important role of the top 100 urban agglomerations in driving high-quality development, and I would like to talk about these three points of view.

First, China's urbanization is still in the middle of the process of rapid advancement.

Over the past 40 years since the reform and opening up, we have driven economic development with industrialization and urbanization, and urbanization has advanced rapidly. So far, the urbanization rate of the resident population has reached 60%, while the urbanization of the household population is only 44%. Looking ahead to 2035, with a few more years of practice, we will maintain an average annual increase of more than one percentage point in the urbanization rate, so that by 2035, the urbanization rate of our resident population can reach more than 70%, and that of the household population can reach more than 55%. Only then will the rate of urbanization be able to experience a slowdown. Within this period of time, within the next 15 years, we have to create conditions for our urbanization rate to maintain a rapid advancement trend, so as to provide a strong impetus to support the basic realization of modernization by 2035, which is the first point of view.

The second point is that the current urbanization has four distinctive features.

The first feature is that unlike the urbanization in the 1980s, when urbanization took place mainly in coastal cities, some central cities in central and western China are now attracting labor and population at an accelerated rate, and have entered a stage of rapid urbanization. Judging from the population growth rate of these recent cities, in addition to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Nanjing in the coastal region, which maintain a relatively fast population growth rate, the population growth rate of these cities in the central region has accelerated significantly, such as Changsha, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and Zhengzhou, which are the regional centers that have become the new growth points of China's urbanization. As these cities are in a more densely populated area, with convenient transportation, rich human resources and a better economic foundation, it shows that our urbanization has advanced from the coastal ladder to the central part of the country, and the realization of industrialization and urbanization in the central part of the country can only determine the fate of China's modernization. We want to achieve modernization, the central and western, especially the central provinces, can achieve industrialization, urbanization, catch up with the level of the coast, which is the key to achieve the development goals of the next 15 years. From this recent period, the rise of central cities in central and western China sees such a trend.

The third feature, this round of urbanization is to advanced manufacturing industry as a growth point, with the 80's to processing trade, mainly resource-intensive products, with such an industrial structure has been significantly different, we through the development of advanced manufacturing industry, especially the equipment manufacturing industry, can replace the imported industrial products, led to the rapid development of China's cities. The third feature is that this round of urbanization has witnessed a rapid development of the service industry, which has become the growth point of urban economic development. Unlike the 80's and 90's, which mainly relied on the growth of industry to drive the expansion of urban scale.

The fourth characteristic is that this round of urbanization is characterized by the citizenship of migrant workers. Every year, the migrant workers who come to the city settle in the city, bring their wives and children to the city, buy a house in the city, and turn from a permanent resident population into a household population, and the quality of our urbanization has significantly improved. That's why I say that the current urbanization has these four distinctive features.

The third point I would like to talk about is how to build central cities, especially the top 100 cities and city clusters, into new growth levels.

First, how to create a new growth level? To implement the development strategy of urban-rural integration, through the suburbanization of the city, through the urbanization of the suburbs, to improve the level of balanced development of urban and suburban areas within the jurisdiction of the city. The best example of this is Shanghai, which hosted the World Expo with the slogan of suburbanization and urbanization of the suburbs. Millions of people were moved out of the city to live in the suburbs, and the suburbs improved their living conditions, and the city was divided into business, industrial, recreational, tourist, and cultural and educational zones according to the functions of these zones. So the suburbs of the improvement of living conditions, the people in the city are willing to go to the suburbs to live, because the city's house sold, to the suburbs can get two suites, but also can buy a car, life and very comfortable, some of the suburbs of primary and secondary schools also have some famous schools to go to that school, the quality of teaching in the improvement of the quality of teaching, and living conditions are good. So now Shanghai to form a pattern of what kind of it, the city center of the people speak Mandarin more, speak Shanghainese run to the suburbs, this is the inevitable trend of urbanization. Your top 100 cities have a large suburb, first of all, your suburban urbanization level, the city's industry should be moved to the outside, or some of the population should be moved to the outside to the outside, in the city's territory in accordance with the urbanization of the suburbs, the suburbs of the urbanization of such a requirement to learn from the Shanghai, Shanghai in fact, with the developed countries to learn from developed countries to a certain degree in the urbanization after the emergence of a suburbanization of the city of Shanghai. There is a trend of suburbanization of cities. I think that these central cities in central China, including the prefecture-level cities of the top 100 cities, to eliminate your suburban and urban boundaries, through rapid and high-capacity rail transit to connect it, in the city's territory, unified planning, to plan, so as to improve the quality of life in the city, to improve the people's living environment and living environment.

Within the urban agglomeration, it is also necessary to connect it with modern means of transportation, rail transit, so that people in the urban areas of the city can evacuate to the suburbs. Beijing has reduced 100,000 people in the last 10 years, that is, people in the urban area within the third and fourth ring road, but it is not enough, people are gathering in the urban area, in fact, the suburbs are well delivered, people are running to the suburbs, that is, the use of transportation to drive the development of the city, drive the development of the economy. We put the rail transit, the suburbs and urban areas, satellite cities and central cities connected, so that we can improve the quality of urbanization, will form a new growth point of urbanization. This is the first measure.

The second measure is to use the establishment of a unified construction land market for urban and rural areas to support urban and rural development. The Fifth Plenary Session of the Central Committee has three very important sentences about the reform of the land system. The first sentence is to establish a market mechanism for the equal exchange and two-way flow of factors. In the second sentence, we should actively explore the implementation of a market system for collectively operated rural construction land, so as to establish a unified construction land market for urban and rural areas. The third sentence is to explore the realization of the three rights of rural residential land. The Fifth Plenary Session of the Central Committee put forward these three sentences, we through the reform, that is, the reform of urban-rural integration, the formation of a system, the formation of collective economic construction land can be directly into the market, it can play a three-strike effect, first, can increase the property income of farmers. For example, last year, our government land premium revenue reached 840 billion, creating a record high, which should essentially belong to the farmers' property income, are the government's low price from the hands of the farmers to the land over, and then auction, a mu of land hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, or even tens of millions of dollars of the king of the land, land value appreciation of dozens of times, 70% of the collection to the government, the developer to take a few 10 percent, the farmers less than 10 percent. Rural construction land saved through the finishing of residential land directly into the market, farmers can share property income, that is, the land premiums gradually turned into a powerful lever for rural revitalization, farmers will be rich, more than 8 trillion is not a small number. Secondly, it can reduce the price of urban housing, 80% of the price is low, if you allow the collective management of construction land into the market, the price of land down, there is a competitor, the supply has increased. Now every year the highest urban housing prices in the first year of the number of developers to recover the land, the first year developers to acquire more land, the second year, the price of housing is low, the first year to acquire less, the second year, the price of housing will rise. If the collective economic construction land in rural areas can be entered into the market, the land price in the city can come down, and the house price will come down. Last year's 8.4 trillion in land concessions inside 80% is real estate, so the curbing of housing prices only to live without speculation, will play a decisive role.

In addition, the integrated development of urban and rural areas, we through the reform of the land system, the implementation of the Fifth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the three sentences, you will be able to drive the development of rural areas with the city, to achieve the goal of rural revitalization, so it is a one-two punch. We should learn from Changsha, where houses cost less than 10,000 yuan. Changsha's experience is six words: build harder, sell harder, increase supply, prices come down when there is more supply, sell harder, as long as there is demand, which is limited, and as long as there is more construction, prices will come down. I think our top 100 cities do not go to think of my prices higher, that I am more popular, the land grant to take a little more, the government can be paid, dominated by the land grant fund income is a little more, if this is a thought on the wrong idea. So we have to change this way of thinking.

The third measure is to build the regional central city as a science and technology innovation center and education center. This round of these cities why the expansion is faster, industrial expansion, population expansion faster? The main reason is that these cities are better educated and have a higher concentration of universities, like Xi'an, Wuhan, Changsha, Chengdu, all of which have a high concentration of universities. University of these entrepreneurial power, the cultivation of talent, now looks like the backbone up, they drive the development of advanced manufacturing industry and the development of advanced service industry, so now these cities become a growth point of urbanization. Our next step in the central and western cities, including all the top 100 cities, we must do a good job of education, training of talent, to learn from Shenzhen, Shenzhen, why can become an innovative city, Shenzhen applied for international patents, a few years ago accounted for 47% of the whole of China, if we are in the top 100 cities inside the city then out of so 4, 5 like Shenzhen, such as an innovative city, including our coastal areas, such as Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi, very good conditions, can become an innovative city like Shenzhen. Good, can become an innovative city like Shenzhen, so we win the U.S. trade war with China will not be afraid. Each city to cultivate a few companies like Huawei, through companies like Huawei to drive your city's scientific and technological innovation, this should be realized as an important strategic service for our next urbanization.

Fourthly, we should build the production-oriented service industry, public service industry and community service industry as the new economic growth point and employment growth point of the city. Production-oriented services include technology market, law, consulting, accounting, auditing, information and other services, while public services mainly refer to education, medical care, social security and so on. Community services have not yet attracted much attention. When I was in the National Commission for Discipline Inspection in 1990, we went to Copenhagen to participate in the United Nations Conference on Social Development, and we were introduced to a figure that said that the number of employees in the community accounted for more than 50% of the total number of employees in the whole society, which was unbelievable to us, as to how can a community accommodate so many people for employment. When we were at the United Nations General Assembly, we were issued a bus ticket for one person, and we could ride around without paying, so we looked and understood that the services in the community were very comprehensive, from the birth of a child to the final delivery to the crematorium, the entire service, everything you need, the service is very thoughtful.

Therefore, the community has become the biggest growth point in accommodating employment, and it is also the place where we owe the most at the moment. For example, the aging of the city we have reached, there are a lot of people over 60 years old, there are a lot of disabled, semi-disabled elderly, the country's 50 million semi-disabled, we are experimenting, we have to sum up the experience as soon as possible, in the position of the top 100 cities, I hope that you will be able to go to Shanghai, Qingdao, if you have the time to go to Japan to visit the Japanese Jianhu County. The old man will not move, now rely on their children, now children are only children, busy working all day, so the old man lying in bed will not move, really worse than death. Therefore, the socialization of disabled and semi-disabled care is underway, and we have to reflect the superiority of the socialist system. When we first started family planning, we said we would only have one child and rely on the state for our old age, but now we are old, more than 70 years old, and now it is time to rely on the state for our old age, and it is time to fulfill the promise. So the top 100 cities I suggest you learn from it.

Inside the community is divided into community pension, institutional pension, home pension, 95% is home pension, home pension to provide him very thoughtful service, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and even accompany the elderly to talk, all kinds of services, the training of migrant workers training, to be able to enter the community service, so that a large number of farmers can be absorbed into the city to get the service up, so that for our city to provide high-quality living services, for the future of urbanization This will provide high-quality living services for our cities and guarantee the healthy development of urbanization in the future!

(Arranged by the Walton Economic Institute based on the audio recording of Zheng Xinli's speech)