Zhejiang Paves the Way: Unveiling a Harmonious Blend of City and Countryside in China’s Latest Urban-Rural Integration Blueprint

Urban and rural areas share beauty and beauty. Zhejiang took the lead in issuing an outline for coordinating urban and rural development and promoting urban-rural integration.

Youjia Village, Huimin Street, Jiashan County in the 1970s. Photo provided by the interviewed unit

Aerial photo of Youjia Village in 2024. Photo provided by the interviewed unit

At 5 o’clock in the morning, 73-year-old Wang Ruiming had breakfast, watered the grape trees in his yard, and went out for a walk.

He is used to walking twice along the new rural community in Youjia Village, Huimin Street, Jiashan County, to see the new changes and chat with the neighbors. When his children moved to the city, he and his wife rented out the vacant rooms in their small building. Together, they earned about 150,000 yuan a year. “Life is enjoyable,” he said.

In the past, this was unimaginable. Wang Ruiming’s father was originally a long-term laborer with “no roof above his head and no space below”. After the founding of New China, the family built a house and allocated land. In 2003, a new community was built in Youjiacun, and Wang Ruiming’s family built a new house with three floors and three floors.

Because it is close to the industrial park, workers from all over the world have poured into Youjia Village to work, and more and more people are renting houses. “One Jiaren from all over the world”, whether it is village affairs management, scholarships, child care classes, New Year gift packs and dividends, new and old residents can enjoy it together.

The village-level collective economy has also grown, with 15 million yuan in revenue last year. The village has added parking spaces, installed charging piles, and built smart platforms such as “Youjia Cloud Smart Governance”… Changes are happening every day, no worse than in the city.

Jiaxing started early in promoting a happy life integrating urban and rural areas, and Zhejiang is at the forefront of the country.

In 2005, the same year that the new rural community of Youjiacun was fully completed, the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government took the lead in formulating and implementing the “Zhejiang Province Outline for Coordinating Urban and Rural Development and Promoting Urban and Rural Integration”, which attracted national attention. The “Outline” puts forward requirements such as “putting people first”, “further optimizing the spatial layout of productivity and population”, and “strriving to break the urban-rural dual system structure and promote the rational flow of urban and rural resource elements”, and deploys and coordinates the development of urban and rural industries, the development of urban and rural social undertakings, and the urban and rural foundations. Six major tasks, including facility construction, will coordinate urban and rural planning as a whole to promote urban and rural prosperity. Under the guidance of the “Outline”, various localities have made steady progress in accordance with local conditions.

The mountain-sea cooperation project continues to deepen. In mountainous and island counties, strategic innovations such as “one county, one policy” and “small counties but big cities” have been implemented. The “15-minute public service circle” has been solidly advanced… and the “three major gaps” have been continuously narrowed.

Last year, Zhejiang launched the implementation of the “Thousand Village Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Improvement” project and the comprehensive land consolidation project to improve the county’s carrying capacity and deepen the project, exploring the integration of basic public services, with the three basic units of future communities, future villages, and urban and rural style model areas. We will use the carrier to explore new scenes of a better life and speed up the drawing of a new picture of “thousands of villages leading the way, tens of thousands of villages revitalizing, the whole region enjoying common prosperity, and urban and rural harmony”.

Jiashan uses rural housing agglomeration as the entry point for coordinating urban and rural areas, implements rural land consolidation, and comprehensively applies related policies such as land consolidation, linking increases and decreases, and rural property rights system reform. Today, the overall urban and rural employment rate in Jiashan exceeds 95%; the urban and rural basic medical insurance participation rate reaches 99.8%; the urbanization rate reaches 75.2%; a total of five rounds of “Strengthening Villages Plan” have been carried out, and the average village collective economic regular income has exceeded 4.8 million yuan. In 2023, the per capita income ratio of urban and rural residents in Jiashan will shrink to 1.53:1, leading the country.

Yaozhuang Town in Jiashan County used to be a purely agricultural town. More than 20 years ago, this town, which is located in the core area of ​​the Yangtze River Delta and has an excellent regional location, did not even have a few decent roads, let alone any notable industrial projects. The transformation began in 2008. Yaozhuang was included in Zhejiang Province’s pilot program for comprehensive urban-rural supporting reform, promoted rural housing renovation and agglomeration, gradually guided farmers to “bring land to the city”, and built a new urban-rural integration center including the main center of Yaozhuang and the sub-centers of Dingzha and Yuhui. Community.

After the space was freed up, Yaozhuang cultivated two leading industries featuring precision machinery and intelligent IoT, and two-thirds of the town’s labor force changed from farmers to professional workers. In 2023, Yaozhuang will achieve a regional GDP of 12.95 billion yuan, an increase of 7% over the previous year, and will enter the top 200 regional economies in the country.

The boundary between city and countryside is becoming increasingly blurred in Jiashan. Walking into the Party and Mass Service Center of Jinxiu Community in Yaozhuang Town, there was constant laughter and laughter in the community nursery class. The teacher led the children to read picture books and sing children’s songs. In this new community established at the end of 2021, many residents or their families work in Shanghai. “We are built in line with big cities and have advantages such as natural scenery. We can provide high-quality community services for one old and one small, which is very attractive to talents in the Yangtze River Delta.” Wu Wenbin, secretary of the community party branch, said proudly.

Rural areas are also more suitable for living and working. In Jiangcun Village, Tianning Town, a century-old fish market has opened more “lively”.

At dawn, 65-year-old fisherman Yin Guoxiang set up his stall. “After the environmental improvement, the water quality is getting better and better, and there are more and more fish. I can sell it for more than 300 yuan a day at most.”

Different from the old fish market that was randomly placed and dirty in the past, the new fish market is fixed on the main road of the village and is equipped with modern facilities such as wash basins and sewage systems. Next to it is the village’s tourist service center and a parking lot with charging piles. Fields, lighted basketball courts, home-based elderly care centers… Jiang Cuncun has become a “new Internet celebrity”. Last year, the per capita annual income of villagers exceeded 50,000 yuan.

From the “world of difference” between urban and rural areas to “although there are differences between urban and rural areas, there is little difference between urban and rural areas”, Zhejiang’s cities and villages each have their own beauty, and they share the same beauty.

In the past year, Zhejiang has built 292 harmonious rural demonstration villages, launched the “Seven Advantages” project for public services, and completed 56 projects and 31,569 people’s livelihood projects in ten aspects including education assistance, medical and health care, elderly care, and employment and entrepreneurship with high quality. project. In the first half of this year, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in the province was 41,365 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.9%; the per capita disposable income of rural residents was 24,589 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.2%. The per capita income ratio of urban and rural residents was 1.68, 0.04 smaller than the same period last year.