This paper comes from the Journal of China Agricultural University (SOCIAL SCIENCES EDITION) No. 1, 2020, and is excerpted from back to the countryside: holistic vision and Chinese social research!
Liu Shouying
What is the essence of the three rural issues? How can we really imagine, understand and describe agriculture, rural areas and farmers? How to practice?
I used to think it's not time to discuss rural issues, but now I think it's an opportunity to really study rural areas as a problem. What we need to reflect on is whether our whole understanding of rural areas has been discussing rural issues for a long time? Not really. In fact, when you go to the countryside to do business, including the current "three rural" proposition, most of the time it's just artificial. A few years ago, I saw a lot of people taking pictures with cameras in the countryside. They did it just for planning and design.
This is the first question of what I want to discuss. Is our discussion really about rural issues. Now a large number of studies have a strong focus on government thinking, which is not the proposition of rural itself. Under this kind of thinking, researchers and actors have two kinds of very strong directions: one is that the government wants to go to the countryside to do things, and it is regarded as a mainstream direction; the second is that the more powerful intellectuals expect to find the right to speak, which are very harmful to the development of the countryside. The first one is the root of many problems in the whole countryside. The second one is actually that the words of intellectuals mislead the study of the countryside.
Let's start with the first direction. Is the current government policy talking about "agriculture, rural areas and farmers"? At the hottest time, many people are talking about "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", but in fact, they are not talking about "agriculture, rural areas and farmers". In fact, the government is talking about agriculture, which is about increasing production and how much food it produces. How much grain does it produce have to do with farmers? It's you who want more food. It's you who want more production. Increasing grain production is what the Minister of agriculture wants to say every year. When you go to the countryside, you see that the peasants are not concerned about these things. For example, our first concern is agriculture, and the second is the problem of farmers. The problem of farmers doesn't mean that there is something wrong with the farmers themselves. In fact, you think they will bring you problems, so you should "care" for them.
I am deeply impressed by the problem of farmers' burden. When I worked in the development research center of the State Council, when I went back to my hometown, the villagers ignored us, including my relatives in the village. When I went back earlier, they all gave me eggs, but later when I went back, they saw me turn around and leave. Why didn't they give me eggs? And they said, eggs? Now an acre of land only produces 400 yuan, you have to take 500 yuan. At that time, the burden of farmers was very heavy. As a problem of farmers, you think it is a "problem". Later, after the acceleration of urbanization, there were disputes and petitions in rural areas, many of which involved the rights of farmers. At this time, the government "cares" the farmers. Are they worried about the farmers? No, they are still worried about their problems? These farmers are always running to Beijing (petition), how can they not be allowed to run to Beijing? In fact, he is concerned about this problem.
"Agriculture problem", it is the city people who really care about it. The "peasant problem" is also the government's fear that the peasants will "do something". If there are "three rural issues", the weakest one is "rural issues". No one has ever really cared about it. One of the most important reasons is the problem of our whole research paradigm. One of the limitations of our current research paradigm is that it does not take the countryside as an independent research unit. Especially since the founding of new China, many issues we care about, such as farmers' issues and agricultural issues, are all issues of concern to the government, but as an independent subject, the village itself is actually more and more ignored by us. There are two reasons for this, one is the concern of the researchers themselves, the other is that the village itself has changed. In fact, there is a tendency of "de rural" in the rural construction in our history. Is there really a "three rural" problem? Whether there is a real problem in the countryside is a problem in itself. In addition, in the original paradigm of "three rural" issues, he has not really paid attention to the countryside as a problem. For the government, he does not care about the countryside. Just as Professor Liu Zhiwei said, the elimination of the countryside is not over? Can't we modernize by eliminating it? But its problem in this round is that it "declines but does not die, declines but does not die". In the case of "declining but not dying, declining but not dying", the countryside has become a problem. I didn't think that the countryside is a problem. I thought that as long as the countryside dies, it can't. In this case, it is impossible to understand the countryside from its own subjectivity. The reason for this situation is related to the specific research paradigm or perspective. In other words, one possible step forward for the central government to raise rural issues this time is to let us really start to pay attention to rural issues. From the perspective of research paradigm, we should pay attention to the countryside as a subject.
In fact, there are two big differences in modern research, one is pure western research, such as the research of Bukai and others, who are talking about the rural economy; the other is the research represented by Mr. Fei Xiaotong, who is talking about the Jiangcun economy. They are observing in the village as the basic unit, which is very different from the Western paradigm in which the farmer economy is the unit. After reading Mr. Fei Xiaotong's works, I feel that we need to pay high attention to the structure of the countryside. On the contrary, our current research focuses too little on the structure of the countryside. We always want to transform the countryside. We never think about the fact that the countryside has lived well for thousands of years, but the people who go in say how they are so bitter, how they are so poor, how they are so backward, just like the rural construction sent in to teach people to read because they think others are stupid. I think what Mr. Fei Xiaotong said is to let us reflect: the village has its inherent structure, which is a very important factor for the stability of the village. Academic attention to this structure is insufficient. What is the structure of the countryside? Fei Lao thought it was an "organic coordination" structure. The farmer is never a pure farmer. He is also a craftsman. When I was in college entrance examination, I thought that if I didn't go to college, I would be ready to be a carpenter. The most desirable thing for children in our country for the new year is that the tailor comes to their home. When the tailor comes to make clothes, the children can eat meat. The structure of traditional villages is complementary to agriculture and industry, which is its form of business. Its economy has never been a peasant household economy, and its agriculture and handicraft industry cooperate with each other.
In reality, researchers see that rural farmers in China have never been farms in the Western sense. I took my students to the farm last Spring Festival. The students asked the farmers back home what did you do? These farmers say that they "don't have a lot of land", so why do they spend a lot of time? You ask him, he can't tell. He said he helped people cut trees today, put two pigs tomorrow, and sold something the day after tomorrow. So what kind of profession is this? When we say that he is a farmer, in fact, he cooperates organically in business forms. But we don't say you are a farmer. We say you are a farmer. In fact, this is not the case, so this is what we should pay attention to.
Rural areas are often destroyed because of the intervention and influence of external forces, which are often misled by various factors (including thinking). This kind of external force destroys the organic structure of the countryside. Once the organic structure is destroyed, there will be problems in the countryside. From the perspective of Fei Lao's analysis, since modern times, all previous rural crises have been caused by the destruction of this organic structure. First of all, it destroys business forms other than rural "agriculture". In modern times, western industrial products, such as foreign fires, foreign materials, and foreign cloth, wiped out the rural industry, and the peasants were classified as "peasants". "Agriculture" is only a means of subsistence. When farmers' lives and livelihoods are all put on "agriculture", the result can only be poverty. After poverty, even if the people in the countryside went out, the squire also went out, and the whole governance of the countryside was ruined. The structure of urban and rural areas is the same. I am also reflecting on this recently. What is the core of urban-rural relationship? There must be something in the countryside to exchange with the city. If there is only agriculture but no work in the countryside, then there will be nothing in the countryside, only enough food for the countryside, and nothing to exchange with the city. Once there is no exchange, the structure of urban and rural areas has been destroyed. This is the first time that the rural structure has been destroyed. The destruction of the second rural structure was self-made, such as the industrialization in the planned period. It is the same reason that the modern industrialization led to the rural crisis, and it also narrowed the rural industry completely. It used to be foreign goods that hit the rural industry, but this time it is the strongest industrial system we have built. The industry in the rural area has been narrowed to only grain and planting. As a result, all the farmers and workers in the original structure of the whole village have been destroyed. In this way, the farmers can only be poorer, and there are less things that the countryside can exchange with the city. Therefore, what Fei Xiaotong saw when he returned to the countryside in this period was that the organic cycle of Suzhou had been destroyed again.
The best state of rural structure is from 1980 to the early 1990s, when the organic structure in the countryside was restored. When the rural economy is diversified, farmers can engage in sideline business, raise chickens and sell eggs; then they can engage in local industry. Just now, Professor Liu Zhiwei also talked about the development of villages and towns. In fact, there were both township enterprises and small urbanization at that time. It is through these links that the organic structure of the countryside has been restored. In my opinion, the current round of rural problems is mainly due to the way of rapid industrialization and urbanization. I am opposed to the fact that as long as urbanization and industrialization are carried out, they must be modernized. The core of the rural problem here is not whether or not to industrialize, but how to industrialize. Our way of industrialization and urbanization has led to several negative effects. One is the complete decline of the original local industry and towns. The second is that the road of industrialization and urbanization has its own problems. Our farmers are basically "bumped" into the city and into the industry. After bumping into the city, the government has not allowed them to "land", so that the farmers can only passively return to the countryside. The passive return of farmers to the village has produced two results: one is that the restructuring of the village itself is in contrast with the world. We are all concerned that the share of output value of China's agriculture has declined and the employment structure has declined, but the decline of our output value and employment structure is quite different from that of the world. The output value share of our agriculture accounts for 5%, but the employment share accounts for 20%, close to 30%. This is a contrast with the world, because the farmers do not stay in the city after entering the city. The second is that the agricultural remuneration cannot go up. When we used to talk about modern agriculture