Urbanize by strengthening villages

Urbanization is a necessary phenomenon of modernization. The city and government should take the responsibility to care for the migrant workers' main concerns of city living and transform the migrants into urban residents, especially the ones who have lived and worked in the cities for a long time, says an editorial in Nanfang Daily. Excerpts:

More than 200 million migrant workers now work and live in Chinese cities without having urban resident identity and the same public welfare as their urban counterparts. The migrants have four big concerns: housing, education for their children, medical care, and retirement pensions.

The problem for Chinese urbanization now is that laborers leave the villages but they do not really enter the cities. This will cause an agricultural decline and serious urban problems.

China should promote balanced development of the city and the village. Urbanization does not mean the villages will disappear and agriculture will become weaker.

Urbanization is a process of the people. The Chinese government should divert more money from infrastructure construction to improve the productivity of Chinese agriculture and public welfare and build government-subsidized houses for both farmers and migrant workers, and create more stable jobs for them.

Without a stable agriculture as foundation, China cannot accomplish urbanization successfully.