Chapter 19 2. Flow makes life better

American economist William Arthur Lewis established an economic model of development economics in 1954, that is, the dual structural characteristics of economic development in developing countries: the agricultural sector with ancient villages as the carrier and the urban sector as the carrier Modern industrial sectors coexist.It believes that the transfer of rural surplus labor to the industrial sector is possible and necessary, and is one of the keys to the development of this economic structure. "The development of China in the first 30 years does not seem to be enough to confirm this theory: the surplus labor force in the countryside not only failed to transfer to the industrial sector, but also passed the household registration system, education system, medical system, pension insurance system, labor protection system, marriage system, etc. etc., strengthened this dual structural feature. Chinese society is divided into two distinct and difficult-to-move sections—urban and rural areas. The offspring of urbanites naturally enjoy all the treatment of urbanites, while farmers and their offspring enjoy It is fixed on the land and in the village. Its obvious effect is to force a large amount of surplus labor in the countryside to stay in the countryside, thus avoiding various social problems caused by their transformation into openly unemployed people in the city. The negative side of this policy The effects are far-reaching." (Urban Monsoon)

In fact, the truth is very simple: a pool of stagnant water or a canal of running water, which one do you think is better?Under the pressure of Shanghai's high cost of living, "escape" is undoubtedly a brave and wise choice. "Xinmin Evening News" once cooperated with Xinmin.com and launched a poll in March 2010: Housing prices and other living expenses in Shanghai remain high. Can new Shanghainese afford it?When the pressure of life and work increases, has their sense of happiness decreased?To stay, or not to stay, that is the question.A total of 2481 netizens participated in the survey.

"Do you have any plans to give up Shanghai and go to other cities or return to your hometown for development in the next 1-3 years?" 414 new Shanghainese participated in the survey, of which 316 admitted that they had ever thought of leaving Shanghai, accounting for 76.3% of the total .This means that 3 out of every 4 respondents have considered leaving Shanghai. Among the new Shanghainese participating in the survey, there are many white-collar workers and gold-collar workers. 406 netizens revealed their educational level, 304 of them had a bachelor degree or above, accounting for 74.9%.Regarding the question of "monthly income", 688 netizens answered, and 371 people chose the highest grade "above 8,000 yuan", more than half of the total number of people.It can be seen that Shanghai, an international metropolis, is also facing the crisis of brain drain while attracting elites from all over the world.

There are various reasons for brain drain.Four main reasons were given in the survey: "I can't afford a house or it's too tiring to be a house slave in Shanghai" "The cost of living is high and the work pressure is high" "The competition is fierce and my own development space is limited" "I am alone in a foreign land and I can't take care of them." family". As a result, 499 netizens participated in the survey, and 224 votes were cast for "I can't afford a house, I don't want to be a house slave", accounting for 44.9% of the total votes.

The experience of Hong Yu, a boy from Hunan, is a microcosm of the 224 votes.He came to Shanghai right after graduating from a prestigious university. From finding a job to finding a girlfriend, he went smoothly, but he was stuck in Shanghai's housing prices when he was talking about marriage. "I work in Shanghai, and my monthly income is stable, hovering around four or five thousand yuan; but the house price is always so unstable—climbing steadily, getting higher and higher." Hong Yu said with emotion, "Shanghai houses are too expensive, and my house is too expensive. The conditions in my hometown are not bad, but I really can’t afford it. If I go back to develop, I can buy a house this year.”

Hong Yu recalled that when he first came to Shanghai in 2003, the price of a house in Pudong Jinqiao area was only 3,000 yuan per square meter, but now it is more than 20,000 yuan. In 2007, Hong Yu began to look at houses for marriage, and all he looked at were second-hand houses in Pudong.His deepest impression is that after April 2007, the Shanghai property market has been advancing all the way. "At that time, the stock market was so good that the houses were soaring. The unit price of a house nearly ten years old was more than 15,000 yuan in mid-2008, and now it has risen to 24,000 yuan. Now there are new buildings in the center of Shanghai's traditional nine districts. , The asking price of first-hand properties in the inner ring and middle ring is 30,000 to 40,000 yuan per square meter."

Hong Yu said frankly that he made money in the last round of the stock market, but he still couldn't afford it. "Deposits are gradually increasing. Compared with the more rapidly rising housing prices, the money I saved seems to never be enough for the down payment." Without a house, Hong Yu and his girlfriend's marriage was delayed.Under the stalemate, the two finally officially broke up in the autumn of 2009.Returning to his hometown Chenzhou during the Chinese New Year, Hong Yu made up his mind to only buy a one-way ticket. Just after the Spring Festival in 2010, he was successfully re-employed in a local cigarette factory, and his salary and benefits were no worse than those in Shanghai.Immediately afterwards, Hong Yu began to look for housing. "In the key development areas of Chenzhou City, the house price is about 5,000 yuan per square meter. Even in the best locations, it is 8,000-9,000 yuan per square meter. Parents help with the down payment, and a new house of 500,000 yuan is affordable."

Hong Yu's life is back on track, and a lot of relatives and friends in his hometown help him introduce girlfriends.For Hong Yu, the stable life in his hometown is happier than the breathless Shanghai under heavy pressure. The high cost of Shanghai is the high cost of living for individuals; for Shanghai itself, it is a huge "social security hole", urban construction such as transportation that requires a lot of financial resources, and a severely unbalanced financial situation.Therefore, Shanghai urgently needs rich people and enterprises that can quickly create wealth for the city.

Therefore, Ma Yun left Shanghai. At the First Session of the Eleventh Shanghai CPPCC held on January 27, 2008, Yu Zhengsheng, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, asked to reflect on "why Shanghai can't keep Jack Ma", and said that "for Shanghai to lose such a giant that developed from a small enterprise The business is quite sorry." In fact, as early as August 18, 2006, at the "Chinese Business Leaders Annual Conference · 2006 Shanghai Forum" held in Shanghai, Jack Ma, who was invited to participate, had already answered this question: Why can't Shanghai keep Jack Ma?

Ma Yun said: "I am from Hangzhou. Hangzhou people and Shanghai people are always right together. In the eyes of Shanghai people, we are all country people. I first put my headquarters in Shanghai five or six years ago. At that time, I rented an apartment on Huaihai Road. A very big office, well-decorated, but within a year it was very tiring and we couldn’t recruit people. They said that Alibaba is a company, and almost no one paid attention to us.” At the beginning, “We decided to start from Beijing Withdrew to Shanghai, first chose Beijing, and finally decided to go back to Hangzhou. At that time, I comforted myself, and I said that in Beijing and Shanghai we were one of 500 children, and in Hangzhou we were the only children in Hangzhou, so at least We were able to receive more attention and attention in Hangzhou because we were still young at that time."

It may also be due to the small size of the company. Ma Yun said that at that time, Shanghai was "afraid of innovative companies like us." Companies are just starting their businesses, so it’s best not to come to Shanghai.” What makes Jack Ma feel deeply is that in the eyes of Shanghainese, "we are all country people". "As a metropolis, it should not compare where the buildings are taller and the roads are wider, but how big a city is, and how to accommodate foreigners to start businesses." In 1999, after leaving Shanghai, Jack Ma and a team of 17 others founded Alibaba.com in Hangzhou, providing a trading platform for small manufacturers to sell their products.After that, Alibaba thrived and became a major online trading market, allowing small businesses around the world to seek potential trading partners through the Internet, and communicate with each other and conclude deals.Alibaba was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on November 6, 2007, with a fundraising amount of US$1.7 billion, which was second only to the IPO record set by Google, an Internet stock listed on Nasdaq in the United States in 2004. Therefore, Ma Yun summed up his experience and said: "To start a company, to create a company, as long as there are business opportunities, as long as there are people, as long as there are resources, all over the country can do it, but to make it bigger and better must be a standardized city. It needs a very good city with all kinds of resources and environment, Shanghai can make you big, and other places can make you out.” The implication is that Shanghai is more willing to add icing on the cake, rather than to send charcoal in a timely manner. According to a survey, Shanghai, which was once favored by many private enterprises, is becoming more and more expensive. As of June 2007, more than 7,000 Zhejiang private enterprises have withdrawn from Shanghai and moved their headquarters or important departments to Shanghai. Hangzhou, Ningbo and Hong Kong and other places. Mobility refers to the free movement of people between cities, between cities and countryside, and between countryside and countryside, without limitation of regions.This flow will make the ground beneath your feet and the concrete around you truly come to life.In the early days of liberation, Shanghai capitalists fled to Hong Kong with capital and technology, but Hong Kong did not develop unprecedentedly because of this. It was not until the end of the 1950s that the influx of a large number of immigrants drove the development of Hong Kong's light industry and made Hong Kong's economy take off.In other words, a city cannot prosper with capital alone. What really makes a city full of vitality is people, who are always free to shuttle and come and go. Since the end of the 20th century, the number of immigrants in the United States has been increasing year by year, reaching 35.2 million in 2005, accounting for 12.1% of the total population of the United States.These immigrants mainly settled in big cities, and they had a significant impact on the urban population, labor market and urban development in the United States.The most direct is the entry of a large number of labor force, which supplements the shortage of labor force and prospers the city's economy. "In 1994, the median age of people born in the United States was 32 years old, and in 2004 it was 35 years old. As a result of the aging population, there will be a shortage of labor force in the future, especially in industries with physical requirements. The population is aging at the same time. , the fertility rate of native Americans is lower, and now each woman has an average of 2.0-2.1 children, and it is estimated that in 2015-2020, it will drop to 1.9. Therefore, it is difficult to fill the shortage of labor force by natural population growth. In this context, the arrival of immigrants supplements this deficiency. At present, there are about 21 million foreign laborers in the United States, accounting for 14.5% of the total labor force, and half of these people entered the country after 1990. 1994-2004 , the immigrant labor force in the United States has increased by 66%, while the native labor force has only increased by 7%" ("The Impact of Contemporary Immigration Waves in the United States on Cities"). Since migrants prefer to live in metropolises more than natives, 43% of the migrant workforce is concentrated in cities, while only 25% of the native workforce, therefore, migrants have a greater impact on the urban labor market.At present, 60% of Miami's labor force is foreign population, while the foreign labor force in Los Angeles has 3.2 million people, accounting for about 16% of the total foreign labor force in the country.Immigrants entered the urban labor market and took on jobs that natives were unwilling to do. The role of immigration is mainly reflected in urbanization. In Manchester, England, since the industrial revolution, a large number of laborers came from the countryside to the city, which created Manchester, a textile city.Detroit in the United States, also because of urbanization, attracted a large number of rural surplus labor and became a motor city. The household registration system of a country should not be based on a city or a certain region. Even in a country like the United States where the states enjoy full autonomy, various laws are different or even contradict each other, but the national household registration system is basically unified, because the household registration system The system involves the most basic liberty entrusted to the people by the constitution.China's "Constitution" also has this provision. Therefore, when we talk about household registration reform, this is what is being changed.According to the experience of foreign countries, especially almost all advanced countries in the world, the reform of household registration is to eliminate this kind of household registration privilege and eliminate the unfreedom caused by the household registration system. The spirit of "people-oriented" makes the "citizens have the freedom of movement" stipulated in the "Constitution" not be rendered useless by the household registration system. Premier Wen Jiabao of the State Council stated in his 2010 Government Work Report: to advance the reform of the household registration system and relax the conditions for household registration in small and medium-sized cities and small towns.Solve the employment and living problems of migrant workers in cities and towns in a planned and step-by-step manner, and gradually realize that migrant workers enjoy the same treatment as urban residents in terms of labor remuneration, children's education, public health, housing rental and purchase, and social security.This was interpreted by the outside world as the start of the reform of China's household registration system. No matter how many obstacles are encountered, the reform of China's household registration system is always the general trend and the aspiration of the people.Under this general trend, water flows to low places and people go to high places.This high place is of course not a place with high living costs like Shanghai, but a place with high profits and a strong sense of happiness.If you can't get the right rewards, why insist on staying and continuing to be exploited?