This report is to describe the small scale town development policies in China that were carried out by Central Government and regional governments, throughout preparation stage to implementation stage, by looking at some concrete cases. The major findings and conclusions are as follows.
(1) The policies to develop small scale town in agricultural regions have been progressed from preparation and concept stage to implementation satge since 1987, in orderto cope with problems such as exess labor, massive movement of population from rural area to cities, rapidloss of arable land, and deepening environmental problems, caused by Contract Production System and the second phase of industrialization of agricutural regions.
(2) As the concrete steps for the policy implementation, a step-by-step approach was taken. First, the training for village leaders who implement the policy and experiment in model district were conducted. Then, with the experience of these places, it was expanded to nationwide development with phases.
(3) At the selecion of the model districts, regional characteristics and the level of development of small towns were taken into consideration, and the feasibility of experiment was regarded as the most important factor. For example, geographically, experiments as areswise, as linear, and as point were planned, according to the economic conditions of Eastern, Central, and Western regions. Based on the progress of small town development, certain objectives were set up, depending on each regions' conditions, such as degree of urbanization in agricultural area at Prefectural level, total development of small twons within the regions, and improvement of living environment, etc.
(4) With the development policy for the experimerts in the model districts, more emphases were placed on the merit of diregulation and flexible application of family registration, procurement of construction capital, use of land, and utilization of public facilities, rather than Central Government's projects and subsidies.
(5) With the experience of not being able to fully implement the concept in past, concrete plans were defined in the policy. Those inclused clear implementation schedule and time line, strong promotion method, periodical evaluation, and competition mecanism with rewards and punishments.
(6) At the regional level, realistic, feasible policies that accord to each region's particular conditions were adopted, rather than simply to apply the central government's policies. Like the case in Jiangsu Province, more effective considerations were given in adopting audinances which provided more concrete construction objectives and standard for decision making, and which replaced subjective and abstract audinances.
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