Source: wechat official account: Jiubian has been authorized to reprint
Shanghai released a Wang bomb yesterday, saying that fresh master graduates who have reached a certain level do not need to “score” and can settle directly if they meet the basic conditions.
To understand what this means, we must first understand why cities like Shanghai do not allow people to settle down casually.
The first reaction of many people was that if the settlement was completely liberalized, everyone would go to Shanghai. Wouldn’t Shanghai have to be crowded?
In fact, no, because now you want to go to Shanghai, and no one will stop you. You have no registered permanent residence there all your life, and no one will drive you away. If you ask others why they don’t go to Shanghai, it’s estimated that no one will tell you about the hukou. The probability is that it’s too stressful and the house price is high.
The question is, what impact does this account have?
There are two main points. One is that children go to school. In fact, this problem is not a big problem in the front line. There are many people in the front line. Their children are in international schools, and they will not prepare for the college entrance examination in the future, but will go abroad directly; The other is pension, which doesn’t matter to those with more money, because if you’re not in the system, there’s really not much pension and you can’t count on it.
Speaking of this, you see, that Hukou is useless for the rich, and it is useless for the poor, because the main problem of the poor not staying in Shanghai is not hukou. It is mainly aimed at those middle-level people who may not expect to receive pensions, but the problem of children’s enrollment is very troublesome. International schools can’t afford to go, and they won’t let them participate in the Shanghai college entrance examination. They may be forced to leave in their thirties.
Why was it so strict before?
This is more complicated, because this thing is inherited from history, and then has a huge impetus to the development of coastal cities, so it has been retained.
What is the driving force?
After 1978, China gradually did not regulate the free flow of ordinary people. If you go to work in factories in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, no one will care about you. But when you get old and need to receive a pension, if you don’t have a hukou in coastal cities, people won’t have to pay your pension, because your Hukou is not here, which is great, and you can save a sum of money.
You may wonder, is there no problem with the population export areas? Of course, there are great opinions. When the labor force was young, it went to work in the coastal areas and had no ability to create wealth. Let’s provide for the elderly? Is it all right?
However, in order to calm down their anger, coastal areas generally have to give some financial transfers to the mainland. In addition, those who escape from the front line every year can also bring some money back to small places, so although they have been talking for so many years, they have not made fundamental changes.
Speaking of this, the question is, why is Shanghai willing to accept these people again these years?
You can find by searching the news that Shanghai is not the first time to lower the threshold this year. In recent years, the threshold for population has been getting lower and lower on the whole. There was a large-scale reduction in 2020. This year, it will continue to increase. Not surprisingly, before 2030, as long as you have a university degree, you will be allowed to settle down. As for whether you can afford a house in Shanghai and how you live, it is your own problem.
Why is there such a trend?
I think of a word called “young economy”, which can explain this.
When I first set foot in the United States about ten years ago, I found a problem. In their enterprises, even in those high-tech companies, the age of their workers is very uniform, and each age group is the same. For example, in a project group of ten people, there are twoorthree in their fifties and sixties, threeorfour in their thirties and forties, and twoorthree in their twenties. Later, this problem was found in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Only here, we are so young that I once wondered where the old man went.
Later, I learned that our industrial structure is too low-end. We only need strength, not experience, and there are too many manpower. We were kicked out when we were a little older. This is also the core strategy of big cities in the past, which used people as batteries and threw them away when they ran out. Besides, there are too many people. The more cost-effective strategy is to rotate as soon as possible.
At that time, I felt that with the economic development and the gradual industrial upgrading, the complexity of the industry would force enterprises to use older and experienced people.
Over the past ten years, I have found that the workplace has grown older with me. Taking our company as an example, when I first joined the company, the average age of our department was less than twenty-eight years old, and now it is thirty-three years old. After chatting with others, I found that everyone was similar.
It can be seen that the age structure is getting older. On the one hand, it is related to China’s aging. On the other hand, it is also because China’s industry is becoming more and more complex. It has begun to shift from “energy dependence” to “experience dependence”. Experience is not just time.
This trend is not obvious in factories, but it is already obvious in enterprises with a little technical content. Shanghai and Shenzhen, China’s industrial frontiers, used to engage in low-end manufacturing and cut off young people one after another. Later, the low-end industry was gradually eliminated, began to move towards high-end industry, and began to rely on brain power and experience. Working in many fields for two years is considered entry-level, and the industrial structure determines that now they need more experienced middle-aged people.
However, under the previous model, many middle-aged people in their thirties may go back to their hometown in order to solve their children’s school problems, or to cities that are easy to settle down, which has caused talent shortages and lack of stamina in cities like Shanghai. In order to solve such problems, it is normal to continuously lower the threshold over the years, so that these people who originally wanted to run away can stay.
In addition, another trend of our country is also obvious. In the past, we were willing to say that we are a big manufacturing country. In the past two years, after you know the “cow and horse life” in the factory, many people are no longer proud of it, and “find a factory to work” on Tiktok has also become a curse.
At the same time, China began to emphasize that it is a big consumer, that is, in the future, the economy will be driven by consumption. The key to a city in the future is how strong its consumption power is.
It’s understandable that with strong consumption power, they spend more money. The money they spend is others’ income. Everyone’s income is high, and the quality of life will come up. However, it is obvious that we can’t count on young people for consumption. What money young people can have, we still have to count on middle-aged people. Moreover, the financial pressure of all provinces is great. The way to solve the financial pressure is to expand the tax base. What is the tax base in the new era? Talent is the tax base. In this case, we cannot rush people on a large scale.
In addition, there is a well-known problem. The essence of house price is also a game of beating drums and passing flowers. New people need to come in constantly to carry sedan chairs. The fertility rate in big cities, which seems to be in a mess, requires a steady flow of input from outsiders. In the past, only top-notch ones were left in the front line. These years, they began to be compatible downward, and they wanted more and more.
You have found that once the economic foundation changes, the upper level concepts also begin to change, and the policies also change. Look, other cities will follow up soon. If the Hukou in Shanghai is worthless, the Hukou in other cities is worthless.
As for why you say Beijing is still contracting, you can only say that the four first tier cities, going north to Shenzhen and Hangzhou (Guangzhou), Beijing is not the same as the others, and their ideas are completely different. The others are “endogenous” and “open”, and their geographical location determines that they are naturally good at doing business. Beijing is different from them. Beijing has always relied on input.
Those places rose through commerce and trade. They have been rich areas since the Tang Dynasty. Of course, Shanghai didn’t have a sense of existence before, and Shenzhen almost didn’t exist before, but the area where they live has been rich for thousands of years. In addition, for 800 years, water transport has been transferring materials from Hangzhou to the north, which shows that the place has always been very rich.
Please note that the rich areas are often the mutual evolution of environment and ideas. The Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta are suitable for business, which leads to the natural sensitivity of people in that place to business. After the pattern is opened, it is easy to become very rich by taking advantage of geographical advantages. After getting rich, they will be more sensitive to business, and then enter a stable positive feedback.
This is also why that place in history was smashed many times in the war, and after reconstruction, it was a prosperous place. In modern history, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement once completely razed the area of Suzhou and Hangzhou to the ground, and all the wealth was moved back to Hunan, but 180 years later, the area has developed again.
If Beijing is not the capital, its economic level should not exceed that of Shijiazhuang, because Beijing’s main responsibility in ancient times was not to develop economy. It was a fortress city, armed to the teeth and ready to resist the southward movement of nomadic tribes in the north at any time.
On the contrary, Shijiazhuang is a huge land transportation hub in the north, and the largest economy in the North should be Tianjin, facing the sea and backed by the plain. This is the shape of natural wealth. The only problem is the poor inland river system. In fact, in those years when Beijing was not the capital, Tianjin was indeed the largest city in the north. In ancient times, Beijing has been unable to feed itself and needs to transfuse blood through the canal. The starting point of the canal is the area of Suzhou and Hangzhou, so it has no “spillover” function. It can even be said that for a long time, Beijing was the spillover of the south of the Yangtze river.
So Beijing has always been different from the logic of the two triangles. They are open and Beijing is self closing.
Not surprisingly, in the future, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta will become larger and larger, and those cities will be connected, and the population may continue to gather there.
Some friends may wonder whether the two triangles will suck up the whole country if this goes on.
Don’t worry, you must go to the Yangtze River Delta because you can’t do anything in a small place. It’s better to go to the front line. Maybe you can bring the front-line business model back to your hometown in the future. In fact, China has been in such a development process in the past few years. The economy has been radiating from the two triangles along the inland river and highway network to the mainland.
In addition, if mainland cities want to solve the brain drain, they should think about how to create a good business environment and how to make young people feel that it is better to stay here than to leave their hometown and go elsewhere, rather than worrying about the brain drain every day and doing nothing. For example, the recent incident in Zhengzhou made me very sad, “670 master and doctoral talents are deeply trapped in the dilemma of uncompleted residential flats”. This kind of thing is to dig its own foundation. Who dares to go to you in the future?
Ending:
The opening and settlement of Shanghai can be seen as a milestone, marking that after China’s industrial upgrading, people are no longer regarded as “cattle”, “fuel” and “dry batteries”. They are discarded after use and rushed back to their hometown after consumption, but as human resources in a real sense. Only in this way can long-term sustainable development be achieved.
This is what I have been talking about. Economic development and commercial activities will eventually change many people’s ideas. The 1000 year old imperial calendar of the household registration system has continued until now, mainly because China’s development is not complete enough. This old system also has its soil.
However, observing its changes over the past half century, we will find that the overall situation is getting looser and looser. With Shanghai becoming looser and looser, it is estimated that other cities (except Beijing) will gradually ignore it. The household registration system has completely become a file system, which gradually has nothing to do with its original purpose.
End of the full text