Chapter 17 Chapter Four: How the Balance Tilts——4 Urban-Rural Divide and the Matthew Effect

In order to explore the burden of farmers, we must face up to the social and economic environment in which farmers live, and we cannot avoid a harsh fact, that is, hundreds of millions of farmers in China are still living in the structure of dual economic development that divides urban and rural areas. Every day, I face enormous mental and economic pressure, strong psychological loss and heavy ideological depression.Bypassing the institutional reasons for farmers' burdens, talking about reducing farmers' burdens is tantamount to saying nothing. When the People’s Republic of China was just established, the central government’s main energy was spent on solving urban unemployment and inflation, and on major economic issues such as the upcoming industrialization development. It was unable to take care of local fiscal expenditures and local construction. Therefore, the central government is very tolerant of local governments participating in the sharing of farmers' interests, allowing local governments to levy local additional agricultural taxes at a certain rate while collecting regular agricultural taxes.Although this kind of local surcharge has a maximum limit, it obviously cannot meet the needs of rural financial expenditures, so various apportionments with different patterns follow, and it will soon become quite serious.

Through consulting the documents at that time, we learned that Liao Luyan, who was in charge of agricultural work at that time, was the first to propose "farmers' burden" after liberation.On October 21, 1952, he reported to the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao Zedong in the "Situation and Opinions on Rural Finance, Farmers' Burden, Rural Primary School Education, and Rural Administration Work" that various phenomena of arbitrary fees Already beginning to emerge at all levels of the new regime.According to field surveys in 61 townships, he found that the total of the four taxes and fees including national public grain, local surcharges, donations to resist US aggression and aid Korea, and village apportionment accounted for 21.53% of farmers' annual output. In addition, there are many projects that are difficult to estimate. For example, agriculture-related systems such as banks, trade, cooperatives, post offices, and Xinhua Bookstore all use the guise of "business development" to force farmers to "subscribe" and "donate."The masses have great opinions, saying that rural cadres have become sellers of paintings, stamps, black tea, vermicelli, and tax stamps.

Liao Luyan's report attracted the attention of Chairman Mao Zedong, and the central government then made special regulations to strictly control local surcharges on agricultural taxes, limiting local surcharges to no more than 15% of the regular tax, and levying them along with the agricultural tax. However, driven by local interests, the local governments not only collect all the agricultural tax surcharges stipulated by the central government from farmers, but also prohibit all kinds of random apportionments, which are even more serious than before. After Chairman Mao Zedong learned about this situation, he was very disturbed.In order to appease the dissatisfaction of the peasants, the Government Administration Council was immediately instructed to make a decisive decision: to cancel all additional taxes, and to subsidize rural cadres' allowances, rural government office expenses, and teachers' salaries from the state treasury; Apportionment to farmers; social public welfare undertakings in rural areas must be based on the complete voluntariness of the masses, and self-raising funds are allowed conditionally, and it is stipulated that such self-raising funds shall not exceed 7% of the regular agricultural tax.

At that time, the decision of the Government Administration Council was referred to as the three-character policy of "enabling", "prohibiting" and "raising".This measure not only fundamentally reduced the burden on farmers, mobilized the production enthusiasm of farmers who had just turned over, but also fully reflected the superiority of the thriving new China, and the farmers all applauded. However, just after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Korean War happened unexpectedly. Immediately afterwards, Western countries led by the United States imposed an "economic blockade" on China. Faced with such internal and external troubles, China at that time could no longer be calm and appropriate. into socialism.

Moreover, due to that situation, it seems that our economically backward agricultural country can only choose to give priority to the development of heavy industry to "stand on its own in the forest of nations in the world".The accumulation of this kind of national industrialization has no choice but to make sacrifices to the countryside and farmers.However, in order to transform the labor surplus value of Chinese farmers into the primitive accumulation of urban industrial capital, without a special institutional and organizational arrangement, no government can solve the problems caused by obtaining agricultural tax surplus from the highly dispersed 400 million farmers. Contradictions, therefore, the Chinese peasants who were allocated land not long ago, under the planned organization of the central government, embarked on collectivization step by step. In Mao Zedong's very vivid words, "The messy hair can't be caught, and it is braided. It's easy to catch."As a result, the basic system of rural high collectivization serving the country's urban industrialization was gradually formed.Under this highly centralized monopoly economic system, in order to prevent the rural population from flooding into the cities, in terms of the urban employment system, the labor employment system implemented at the beginning was only responsible for the employment placement of the "non-agricultural population" in the cities. , does not allow the rural population to enter the cities to seek employment.In terms of the grain and oil supply system, there were naturally "special measures". With the introduction of the unified grain purchase and marketing policy in 1953, China began to implement the grain and oil supply system.At the same time, "special measures" on the household registration system also emerged. The "Regulations on Household Registration of the People's Republic of China" discussed and passed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the second paragraph of Article 10 of which regulates the entry of rural population into cities. This regulation marks the formation of my country's household registration migration system centered on strictly restricting the flow of rural population to cities.Over the past 30 years, the burden on Chinese farmers has been huge and heavy, but it has not been revealed.Because the burden of peasants has been shifted from "in front of the stage" to "behind the scenes". From then on, the state no longer has direct economic relations with hundreds of millions of peasants. It became 7 million mutual aid groups; and then reduced to 790,000 agricultural cooperatives; the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958 took only three months, and amidst the sound of gongs and drums, one farmer from all over the country was reunited. They were organized into fifty-two thousand seven hundred and eighty-one people's communes without omission.The fields, cattle, farming tools, food and even most of the means of subsistence that belonged to Chinese farmers or were allocated during the land reform were all taken back to the communes free of charge.More than 50,000 people's communes have become the country's financial units at the grassroots level in the countryside. From then on, they can easily occupy all resources and labor within the scope of the commune through "one leveling and two transfers" anytime, anywhere.

Chinese peasants have become real proletarians! The biggest problem with the "dual structure" of urban-rural divide is that members of a society cannot develop in an overall and balanced way in all aspects of economy and culture, which will inevitably lead to a gap in modernization in a country: some people quickly move towards modernization, while the majority Humans have nothing to do with modernization.Since then, China's urban and rural areas have become two cars running on two separate roads.The huge differences in production methods and working conditions, as well as the vast differences in living conditions and living environments have caused the ratio of real income of urban and rural residents in China to increase year by year.

After the end of ten years of turmoil, the rural household contract responsibility system originated in Anhui Province, that is, the "big contract", which brought the fate of "big shouting" and egalitarianism, and "up to seventy" appeared in rural China. Third, down to the hand, three generations of a family are busy in giving birth", a gratifying situation.Wang Guangyou, former secretary of the Party Committee of Dabai Commune in Feixi County, Anhui Province, once drew a vivid analogy. He said: "In the past, commune members were like ducks in a cage. They were locked up for a long time, and they quacked anxiously. It’s like when the duck cages are opened, and the ducks that have been locked up for a long time come to the pond, some spread their wings and beat the water, some somersault somersaults, some chase each other and play, how happy they are!”

Liao Zicai, a 60-year-old farmer in Shangwei Village, Jinniu Township, this county, also said happily: "The responsibility system is good. There are finally oil beads floating in the gutter of my house. If this continues, in a few years, there will be no distinction between urban and rural areas. We country people will live the same life as people in the city!" The great change that took place in the late 1970s was another great agricultural revolution in New China after the land reform.It has brought about the rapid development of China's rural economy, creating a good result of an average annual real increase of farmers' income of more than 15 percent from 1978 to 1984.Of course, this is only a restorative development.Whether it is Wang Guangyou, the secretary of the commune, or Liao Zicai, an old farmer, they are all too optimistic about the rural areas after the big contract.Faced with the gratifying scene that began to appear in rural China, Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of this great reform, reminded very calmly: "There are many articles on agriculture, and we have not solved the problem yet." One of his "articles" refers to the The pattern of "dividing urban and rural areas" formed in the early days has not changed so far.

One morning in early spring and March of 2001, we came to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and interviewed Lu Xueyi, president of the Chinese Sociological Society.This is a well-known scholar in the field of sociology, and even an expert in rural work research. As early as the 1980s, he served as the deputy director of the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and devoted himself to the study of China's rural areas. He was later transferred to the Institute of Sociology as the director.Because of his special life experience, he stands on a brand new platform to study the burden of Chinese farmers, and has a broader vision and deeper thinking.

"To solve the problem of farmers' burden must look beyond the rural areas." In that conversation, he opened up the conversation so straightforwardly. "The burden on farmers is not only heavy, but also discriminatory." When Lu Xueyi talked about emotion, he would suddenly become impassioned, expressing his concern for the situation of farmers.He said that for a long time, we have artificially separated cities and countryside, citizens and farmers; The food we eat is also divided into agricultural grain and commodity grain, so that farmers can support citizens; the labor system divides people into workers and farmers, and farmers are excluded from factories; There are two kinds of people who enjoy the right, and finally the peasants are excluded from all social security systems.This kind of "one country, two policies" system that completely separates the city and the countryside, one for the city and citizens, and the other for the countryside and farmers, has made Chinese farmers, whether in education, medical care, labor security, There is a serious imbalance in social benefits such as social benefits, pensions, and welfare, or in economic benefits such as circulation, exchange, distribution, employment, and taxes.The artificially demarcated "Chu River-Han Boundary" between urban and rural areas has become an insurmountable gap for hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers.This gap makes every farmer destined to be a "second-class citizen" in this society as soon as he is born.

Just when the article on agriculture "hasn't solved the problem" and the deepening of rural reform was in the ascendant, on October 20, 1984, the decision on urban reform made at the Third Plenary Session of the Twelfth Central Committee of the Party brought China's reform The center of gravity shifted from the countryside to the cities. Theoretically, the start of urban reform can not only put forward new requirements for rural reform and rural economy, but also create new opportunities for rural reform, especially for issues related to cities. A city-rural reform that cooperates and promotes each other The situation is about to emerge.However, the ideal situation that people hoped to see did not appear.Because any reform requires cost.The shift of the focus of reform means that the distribution of national income will inevitably be tilted towards China's cities, which will inevitably make China's rural economy once again fall into an extremely difficult situation. The historical fact is that since 1982, the central government has formulated a "No. 1 document" to guide rural reform every year. For five consecutive years, five central "No. 1 documents" have been issued.These documents have played a huge role in promoting the reform of rural China that cannot be underestimated. People may still remember that in 1984, when the capital held a parade to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, peasants in the suburbs of Beijing passed through Tiananmen Square with a huge slogan saying "Central Document No. 1 is good". The voice of farmers.However, as the focus of China's reforms has shifted from the countryside to the cities, there are not many policies that can be "released" in agriculture. After this, the central "No. 1 Document" on rural reforms can only be written more and more abstract and written. More principles, no new content and new measures, and finally, the "No. 1 Document" used to guide rural reforms quietly disappeared.As a result, a fact that people don't want to see surfaced again: after thirty-two years of Kuangshi, the issue of "peasant burden" raised by Liao Luyan in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China was on December 6, 1984. , that is, at the end of the year when the focus of reform was shifted, it was brought up again at the National Rural Work Conference held in Beijing. At that time, the rural economy had just started to be active, and only a very small number of people got rich first, but the governments at all levels actually thought that the farmers were already rich, and many departments raised the prices of agricultural production materials and increased taxes. Take money out of your pocket. Chinese peasants are losing their reliance on the Party and the people's government amidst the endless burden of administrative expenses and all kinds of apportionments, fund-raising and fines. Gone is nothing. Wan Li, who personally led the rural reform that swept across the country in Anhui, and later became the vice premier of the State Council, emphasized at a meeting: "The benefits obtained by farmers cannot be recycled. We must issue another document to continue to encourage farmers, otherwise , the peasants will no longer listen to the Communist Party.” However, the benefits that the peasants had already obtained were withdrawn bit by bit. Although, during this period, Deng Xiaoping reminded: "If there is a twists and turns in agriculture, it will not be reversed in three to five years." He also emphasized: "Agriculture should be put in a proper position." The cost of the reform, and at the same time, in order to minimize the transaction cost required for the state to obtain taxes from farmers, after the abolition of the people's communes in rural areas across the country, they were then restructured into 92,000 communes with their own independent financial interests. And the township governments with corresponding taxation powers.Later, the stalls of these rural grassroots governments grew bigger and bigger. Not only did they have six sets of teams: the Party Committee, the Government, the Disciplinary Inspection, the People’s Congress, the Political Consultative Conference, and the Ministry of Armed Forces, but they also successively formed “seven institutes and eight stations” representing higher-level government departments. , taxation, public security, industry and commerce, transportation, sanitation, food management, agricultural technology, water conservancy, seeds, plant protection, agricultural machinery, animal husbandry, food, fishery, came into being.Although the sparrow is really small, it has all internal organs.These increasingly expanding units and increasingly complex personnel, without exception, need to be fed by farmers. Since then, the burden on farmers has gone from "behind the scenes" to the "front desk", and it is getting worse day by day! Since then, the state has not made up its mind to streamline the bloated organization and a large number of redundant staff, but in order to meet the growing expenditure needs of local party and government organizations and their subordinate departments, they have continued to rigidly provide them in the form of various "red-headed documents". Agriculture and farmers have added various burdens: for example, not only has the agricultural special product tax been derived from the agricultural tax, the "Regulations on the Management of Farmers' Bearing Expenses and Labor Services" have been promulgated, and even the provident fund, public welfare fund, and village cadres' remuneration and Management expenses, as well as the "village retention" and "township overall planning" required for school running, family planning, special care, militia training, and rural road construction at the village level are also imposed on farmers, and rigid regulations on collection standards are made.Many of these should have been solved by government funding, but in the end they all developed into the main content of the burden on farmers. In particular, Lu Xueyi said that looking at the more than 40 years of history since the implementation of "separation of urban and rural areas, one country, two policies", when the national economy fluctuates and encounters difficulties, it is always the farmers who are unlucky.The country first guarantees the development of cities and national industries through fiscal, taxation, price, financial, and credit policies. Under such conditions, farmers and rural areas must make greater contributions. He bites "contribution" so hard that it actually sounds like "sacrifice". He said that in 1988, due to inflation, the country carried out a macroeconomic adjustment. As the balance of the economy was tilted towards the cities, the per capita net income of farmers in 1989 was significantly reduced. The net income of farmers experienced negative growth for the first time; subsequently, another national macroeconomic adjustment since the mid-1990s caused farmers to pay a higher price than ever before.At that time, the country was determined to carry out the reform of state-owned enterprises, and the macroeconomic adjustment was very big. Tens of millions of workers in state-owned enterprises were laid off across the country, and the registered unemployment rate also increased year by year. In some old industrial bases, the number of laid-off workers even exceeded 10%. , the economic situation is quite severe.However, due to the fact that the prices of commodities, especially the prices of grain and other products, are decreasing year by year, the price of rice has dropped from 2 yuan per catty to less than 1 yuan, and the price of eggs has dropped from 3.5 yuan per catty to 1.8 yuan. The prices of vegetables and fruits have dropped even more. , Therefore, although the allowances paid to employees after being laid off are very small, their lives are still passable, and the whole society has maintained basic stability. In 1996, China's total rural grain output was 109 billion catties; in 1997 it was 988.3 billion catties; in 1998 it was 102.46 billion catties; in 1999 it was 1016.7 billion catties.Calculated on an average of one trillion catties, in November 1996, the average price of rice, wheat and corn was 1.0355 yuan per catty, and the grain income of farmers in that year was 10,300. However, by November 1999, the average price of these three grains had dropped to 0.7075 yuan per catty, and the farmers' income from grain was 7,075 yuan. billion.That is to say, the total grain output in China's rural areas in 1999 was no less than that in 1996, but the increase in production did not increase income, and the actual income of farmers decreased by 328 billion yuan. In addition to grain, the prices of all other agricultural and sideline products have also fallen sharply.Preliminary estimates show that in 1999 alone, compared with 1996, farmers' income from agricultural production also decreased by at least 400 billion yuan.In 2000, agricultural production and income decreased, and farmers' income from agricultural production decreased even more than in 1996. It can be said that in the short four years from 1996 to 2000, the actual income reduction of Chinese farmers was at least 1.6 trillion yuan! This is the huge sacrifice made by the Chinese farmers who bear the burden of humiliation to ensure the country's macroeconomic adjustment and successfully realize the aid to the reform of state-owned enterprises and the stability of urban social stability! Since the focus of China's reform has shifted from the countryside to the cities, the gap between cities and villages, citizens and farmers has gradually widened, and the last thing we want to see has happened: cities everywhere are rapidly becoming bigger and changing. Higher and more beautiful, the living standards of urban residents are also changing rapidly; while in the vast rural areas, there is a phenomenon of "increasing production but not increasing income". The first time "increasing production without increasing income" occurred from 1989 to 1991. In the case of a bumper harvest in agricultural production, after deducting the price factor, the average annual increase in per capita net income of farmers in 1989 was only In 1991, it became a negative growth rate; the second time after 1996, the per capita net income fell sharply for two consecutive years, first from a growth rate of 9% to 100%. 4.6/4. In 1998 it fell to 4%! The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This "Matthew effect" on wealth is increasingly manifesting between China's vast cities and rural areas. Someone once did such a job, entered the relevant policy and commentary texts in the central organ newspaper "People's Daily" and the State Council's public documents since 1986 into a computer for processing and analysis, and found that: 1. In the written part of the farmers, a batch of new words appeared, which is unprecedented in the history of Chinese language and characters: "eat agriculture", "eat big households", "daioiao", "oral agriculture", "farmers' burden" and so on; The most frequently used is "reducing the burden on farmers". This is indeed a thought-provoking analysis. When we started writing this work, a "China Development High-Level Forum Thematic International Symposium" was held in Beijing. At the meeting, many experts called for: In order to meet the needs of China's accession to the WTO, my country's agricultural policies must undergo major adjustments, not only It is necessary to increase support for agriculture and reduce taxes.All countries generally implement subsidies for agricultural products, which artificially lowers the prices of agricultural products in the international market. my country is not only one of the few countries that does not give farmers direct agricultural subsidies, but also one of the few countries that still collect taxes from farmers.From 1996 to 2000, in only ten years, the total amount of various taxes collected from farmers in our country increased rapidly from 8.79 billion yuan to 46.53 billion yuan. Yuan, an increase of four or five times.The per capita tax of farmers is as high as 146 yuan, while the per capita tax of urban residents is only 37 yuan; when the actual income of urban residents is already six times that of farmers, the amount of tax paid by farmers is four times that of urban residents. times!This is already a huge unfairness, but overwhelmed farmers, in addition to paying agricultural tax and agricultural special product tax, there are also various withdrawal and retention fees and various social burdens.Not to mention that Chinese farmers are already miserable, which fundamentally puts China's agriculture at a disadvantage in international competition.Reasonable deflation in capitalist countries such as the United States and Western Europe can still cut interest rates on the one hand, cut taxes on the other hand, and greatly reduce administrative personnel and government expenditures. Is it true that we, a socialist country, can only cut interest rates, but not taxes for the poor? Reduce the burden?