A Theoretical And Practical Study On The CPC's Policy Of Balance The Urban And Rural Development Since 1949

The urban-rural relationship is an important dynamic and interactive relationship widely found in society. It is an integral reflection of the political, economic, and class relationships between the city and the countryside under certain social conditions. How to correctly understand and deal with the urban-rural relationship is a major problem which has been concerning the over-half-a-century history of Chinese socialist revolution, construction and reform. Under the current situation of "industry back-feeding agriculture and city supporting countryside", it is both theoretically and practically important to study the Party's theory and practice on balanced development in urban and rural areas since 1949, to have a systematic examination of the causes and impacts for the Party's urban-rural policy adjustment in different historic periods, and to explore more effective ways to balance the urban-rural development.The research questions in this study are: 1) How has the Party's urban-rural policy evolved from "agriculture compensating industry and countryside supporting city" to "industry back-feeding agriculture and city supporting countryside" in the past over half a century? 2) Why were there the urban-rural gap and the opposition between agriculture and industry after the Party's strategic implementation of "balancing the development between the city and the countryside and combining industry and agriculture" since 1949? 3) How to evaluate the policy of "taking agriculture as the basis and industry as the leading force"? 4) Under current situation, what kind of urban-rural policy should the Party adopt to realize the balanced urban-rural development?To address these questions, this paper will study from the following three aspects: First, from the urban-rural development theory, the paper is going to summarize and comment on the basic viewpoints on the urban-rural relationship by the classical Marxist authors and the different generations of leaders of the Party. Second, there will be a historical review on the adjustment of the urban-rural policy and the evolution of the urban-rural relationship, reflecting on the experience and the lessons of the Party's urban-rural developmental policy. Finally, there will be a study on the effective ways for urban-rural balanced development. From the study, the author concludes that we should make theoretical innovations on the basis of correctly understanding the classical Marxist texts on urban-rural relationship and advance with times; we should pay more attention on their own strategic significance of agriculture and countryside, but not on their supporting function for industry and city; we should employ effective ways for balanced urban-rural development such as the household registration system reform, countryside industrialization, urbanization, and the socialist new countryside building.