Although vast differences in standard of living exist among the native-born residents of Chinese cities, the distinction between all urban natives and rural migrants runs deeper. It is, in fact, the fundamental social division in Chinese cities for several reasons, including labor market segmentation that sees migrants doing dirty, dangerous, and low-paying work; institutional rules that favor urban residents in everything from health care access to university entrance exams; and cultural ideas about the backwardness of rural areas and rural people.

In the housing sector, it is therefore not surprising that migrants’ housing quality is quite low in an absolute sense and relative to that of other urban residents. What is less clear is the source of these differences. Research that we recently completed for the Lincoln Institute leads us to question the conventional wisdom that institutional rules linked to the hukou system are primarily responsible for the differential (Li, Duda, and Peng 2007). We believe that hukou status is only one of several factors responsible for migrants’ differential housing outcomes, and that the research literature has not spent enough time assessing the relative importance of these factors. While not definitive, our empirical results provide several reasons to question a hukou-centric modelof the sources of urban housing inequality.

Canfei He earned his Ph.D. degree in geography from Arizona State University in 2001, and then moved to the University of Memphis, Tennessee, where he taught as an assistant professor. In August 2003, he returned to China as an associate professor in Peking University’s College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and was promoted to full professor in 2009. In addition to his academic duties at Peking University, Dr. He has served as associate director of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy since 2007. He is also the associate director of the Economic Geography Specialty Group of the China Geographical Society.

Dr. He’s research interests include multinational corporations, industrial location and spatial clustering of firms, and energy and the environment in China. The World Bank invited him to write a background paper on industrial agglomeration in China for the World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Global Economic Geography.

Dr. He has authored four academic books and his work is published widely in English journals including Regional Studies, Urban Studies, Annals of Regional Science, International Migration Review, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Post-Communist Economies, and China & the World Economy. Dr. He also serves on the editorial board of three journals: Eurasian Geography and Economics, International Urban Planning, and China Regional Economics.

Land Lines: How did you become associated with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and its programs in China?

Canfei He: I learned about the activities of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s recently established China Program from one of my colleagues at Peking University in 2003soon after I returned from the United States. At that time, the Lincoln Institute was working in China on a number of specific programs, and I became involved in several associated research projects.

My official relationship with the Institute began with the establishment of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (PLC) in October 2007. The Institute had been exploring a more long-term partnership with Peking University for some time, and as those discussions progressed, my previous contacts offered opportunities for me to serve as a liaison between the two institutions. I was nominated by Peking University to serve as the associate director with its director, Joyce Yanyun Man, who is also a senior fellow of the Lincoln Institute and director of its Program on the People’s Republic of China. Over the past two years or more, I have been helping to develop the center and coordinate its work with other partners at Peking University, as well as serving as a research fellow of the center.

Land Lines: Why are urban development studies so important in China?

Canfei He: China’s urbanization during the past three decades has been remarkable. As an overwhelmingly rural population in 1978 when reforms began, China is now 45.7 percent urbanized, and the country is projected to be 60 percent urbanized by 2020. This means that China’s cities will need to accommodate more than 100 million new urban residents in this decade.

Market forces, local forces, and global forces are all conspiring to influence the pattern of China’s urbanization and development. Accompanying large-scale and rapid urbanization are revolutionary spatial, structural, industrial, institutional, and environmental changes in an incredibly brief span of time. The multiplicity of these driving forces makes the study of urban development in China both complex and challenging. The next wave of urbanization will have far-reaching implications for the country’s future development, and thus there is a critical need for more high-quality, objective research on the subject.

Land Lines: What are some of the most unusual aspects of urban development in China?

Canfei He: China’s current urban development is quite different institutionally from that of most Western countries. Urbanization in China has occurred at the same time that its economy has become market-oriented, globalized, and decentralized. Whereas most Western urbanization occurred in a period of greater economic isolation, China’s urban development has been directly influenced by international investment and global economic trends.

A second factor is China’s hukou system of personal registration that limits the mobility of its people in part by linking their access to social services to the location of their registration. This system thus presents an institutional barrier that inhibits rural-urban migration despite ongoing reforms.

Regional decentralization is another important aspect that, combined with the state and collective ownership of land, has allowed local governments to play a distinct role in China’s urban development. Land acquisition fees resulting from the sale of multi-decade leases for the use and development of state-owned lands have generated enormous revenues, and have been a critical source of municipal financial resources for urban infrastructure investment. This fee-based revenue, in turn, creates incentives that have promoted even more intense urbanization. On the other hand, the major planning role afforded to local governments in China means that urban planning practice lacks consistency across the country’s diverse regions, and is often hostage to local interest groups.

China is facing increasing global challenges and pressures from many sources including multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, global environmental standards, and rising energy prices. These challenges may increase the costs of urban development, but at the same time they may encourage a more sustainable process of urbanization.

Land Lines: How do you approach urban development studies in China through your own research?

Canfei He: China’s urbanization goes hand in hand with its industrialization, and foreign investment has played a significant role in the country’s growth. Urbanization demands labor, land, capital, and technology, as well as supporting institutions. Consequently, there are myriad approaches to studying urban development in China that focus on a particular factor or set of factors.

My own research interests fall within the capital and institutional approaches. Specifically, I investigate industrial agglomeration and foreign direct investment in Chinese cities by highlighting the institutional environment of economic transition. Investigating the elements driving industrial agglomeration in different cities and understanding the locational preferences of foreign and domestic firms are crucial for designing coherent and focused urban planning policies.

For instance, my research on foreign direct investment in real estate development and the locational preferences of international banks found that local market conditions and regional institutions largely determine the locational preferences of multinational services. This type of observation can be of use to planners and politicians in China seeking to foster the growth of the service industry.

With the increasing emphasis on global climate change and acknowledgement of the environmental impacts of China’s first 30 years of reform and development, I am also becoming more involved in research on the environmental impacts of urbanization, including energy consumption and carbon emissions. China has made a commitment to reduce its CO₂ emission by 40–45 percent per unit of GDP by 2020, relative to 2005. This means that building low-carbon and energy-efficient cities is another goal on the already lengthy list of challenges that includes servicing, housing, and employing the country’s millions of future urban dwellers.

Land Lines: Given this ongoing international dialogue, how can China best learn from Western urbanization experiences?

Canfei He: We recognize that there is much to learn from the West, including alternative approaches to land policy, housing policy, transportation policy, environmental policy, suburbanization, and the development and planning of megacity regions. China has the benefit of using the West’s experience as a roadmap to help it avoid many of the problems that have arisen in Western cities, such as urban sprawl and gridlock. That economic, political, and geographic diversity offers a wealth of reference points for China’s cities that should not be ignored and can help China avoid problems that have plagued many Western metropolises.

However, it is necessary to research the applicability of particular international experiences, considering the uniqueness of China’s history and culture. Too often analyses of Western urbanization are presented as a blueprint for China, when in fact institutional, economic, and political differences mean that, for one reason or another, those solutions are impractical or unfeasible.

Land Lines: Why is China’s urbanization and urban development so important to the West?

Canfei He: China’s urbanization will be one of the most important dynamics of the twenty-first century, not only for China but also for the West and the rest of the world. Millions of newly affluent consumers and empowered global citizens will exert significant new demands on the world’s finite natural resources in several ways.

First, with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, China and the world committed themselves to halving the number of people living on less than $1 per day by 2015. Given China’s large number of rural poor, the country’s urbanization and economic development will be instrumental in meeting this important goal, as well as in achieving other goals such as those related to education and improving children’s health. Only cities have the institutional reach and financial capacity to meet these goals on a large scale.

Second, much has been made of the gulf in understanding between China and the West in recent years. Urbanization and urban development will help to integrate China further into the global community, but it may also create more opportunities for cultural friction. The West has a vested interest in seeing that China urbanizes in an atmosphere that encourages openness and intercultural exchange.

Third, history demonstrates that urbanization entails a much greater demand for energy and other resources as living standards rise and as consumption and dietary patterns change. It has become a cliché to say that “as China goes, so goes the world,” but China’s urbanization and its related environmental impacts will have direct implications for the West and the rest of the world.

The recent memory of $150 per barrel of oil shows that this future demand is likely to put great stress on international energy markets and the global economy. This latent demand also has broad implications for China’s CO₂ emissions and for global climate change. The United States and China are key to any real hope of keeping the increase in average global temperatures less than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels, as proposed at the recent climate conference in Copenhagen. Whereas the high level of development in Western countries means that changes happen incrementally, China’s rapid urbanization offers hope to limit the world’s future emissions by making significant changes now as the country develops.

Tao Ran is a professor in the School of Economics at Renmin University of China and director of the university’s China Center for Public Economics and Governance. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. His field of specialization centers on China’s urbanization and the political economy of the economic transition, land and household registration reform, and local governance and public finance in rural China. His diverse research has appeared in the Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Land Economics, Urban Studies, Political Studies, China Quarterly, and Land Use Policy.

Dr. Tao received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2002. He is a long-time research fellow at the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy and was previously a Shaw Research Fellow of Chinese Economy at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Chinese Studies. With funding from PKU–Lincoln Institute and from other agencies, such as the National Science Foundation of China, he led a research team and started a large survey on urban migrants and dispossessed farmers in 12 cities across China’s four major urbanizing areas: the Yangtze River Delta (Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces), the Pearl River Delta (Guangdong province), Chengdu–Chongqing region (Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality), and Bohai Bay Area (Hebei and Shandong provinces). He is also working on a project to pilot new urban village redevelopment models in Shenzhen municipality and the Pearl River Delta.

Land Lines: Why is the study of China’s political economy and its transition so important to the country’s future?

Tao Ran: After enjoying nearly double-digit growth in the past three decades, China has become the shining star of the 21st-century global economy. People marvel at its successful transformation from a third-world country into the world’s largest manufacturing base and second largest economy—an evolution that lifted 450 million people out of poverty. As China grows, however, it faces widening income inequality, serious corruption and pollution, and social injustice that has left hundreds of millions of temporary migrants without access to decent urban public services and tens of millions of undercompensated, dispossessed farmers transitioning into industrialized urban economies.

My research explores the institutional sources of China’s fast growth in the past decades as well as the implications, positive and negative, of China as an alternative model for the developing world—as an effective, growth-oriented autocracy with heavy investments in infrastructure and industries, massive exports of manufacturing goods, and selective government intervention and industrial policies. I believe it’s essential to predict what will happen to China in the near future, because it will have important implications for the whole developing world.

Land Lines: Why do you think it is important to study land and household registration? What do these studies say about the current state of China’s socioeconomic structure?

Tao Ran:China is in the midst of an urban revolution, sustaining a massive volume of rural-to-urban migration every year in the last three decades. About 200 million rural migrants are working and living in Chinese cities. Yet, under the persistent hukou (household registration) system, a majority of migrants with hukou registration in their homelands exist as “outsiders” or “temporary population” in their new cities of residence. They are denied access to welfare benefits, subsidized public housing, and urban public schools.

Their difficulties are compounded by highly distorted land use patterns. Typically, when countries urbanize, less than 20 percent of newly utilized land supports manufacturing, leaving a majority of that territory to accommodate migrant housing. Under the current Chinese land requisition-leasing system, local governments lease around 40 percent of newly utilized land to build industrial parks, leaving only 30 to 40 percent of the area every year for residential purposes.

China’s current land use and household registration systems help to generate several dual socioeconomic structures as well. Besides the widely acknowledged urban-rural dichotomy, there is also a dual structure of urban permanent residents versus migrants. Another duality separates homeowners from urban rentees who lag far behind in terms of wealth accumulation. As 90 percent of homeowners are permanent residents, and 95 percent of renters are migrants, these dual structures lead to a highly divided society.

Land Lines: What land use challenges will China face in the coming decade?

Tao Ran:Many cities have constructed industrial parks, or “garden-style factories,” that make very inefficient use of land. Industrial companies lease land at an extremely low price and use only a part of it, leaving other areas undeveloped or allocated for large-scale greenification projects. Local governments undersupply residential and commercial land in order to maximize profits, leading to undersupplied commercial/residential land markets, followed by serious bubbles in the real estate sector. The rapid rise in urban housing prices and the formation of a real estate bubble over the past decade has made it impossible for the vast majority of rural migrant populations to afford commodity housing in cities. In fact, even new labor force entrants with university degrees find that today’s housing prices are far higher than they can afford. Clearly, housing affordability has become the main challenge to China today.

The aftermath of the 2008 world financial crisis had a huge impact on China. The fiscal and financial stimulus package implemented by the central government mainly benefitted local governments, which have continued to invest in even more industrial parks. Consequently, the Chinese economy has experienced more overcapacity in industrial infrastructure and manufacturing goods as well as more serious housing bubbles across all tiers of cities. This path is all the more unsustainable considering that China already suffered from overcapacity in manufacturing and real estate bubbles before 2008. Given the moral hazards of borrowing from state-owned banks and the fiscal illusion that the housing bubble will continue, local government debts have reached an unprecedented level of 10 trillion RMB, half of which was accumulated after 2009. I f there is no real reform in the systems governing land, hukou registration, and local public finance, the Chinese economy will slow down quite significantly. In the worst-case scenario, the housing bubble will burst, leading to a full-scale financial and economic crisis.

Land Lines: What are some potential policy implications of your research on local governance and public finance in rural China?

Tao Ran: China needs to reform its land and household registration systems so that migrants can access affordable housing and decent public schooling services in cities. Land has played an essential role in the making of China’s growth model in the past 15 years—but it is also responsible for current economic woes. In my view, a reform package that centers on land and urbanization provides the best chance of creating a better balance between the country’s import and export rates by unleashing huge domestic demand and relieving the overcapacity problem in many Chinese industries.

I propose a gradualist approach that aims to build a more equitable dual-track system. Under the current land regulatory regime, land ownership is separated into urban and rural; while urban governments have the authority to allocate rural areas for urban development, rural governments do not have the same rights in reciprocity. This bias deprives rural residents of their development rights and leads the Chinese economy down a destructive path.

Total liberalization, however, may result in a crash of the existing housing bubbles when a large volume of rural land is made available to the market. To alleviate this concern on the part of local governments and urban homeowners, China may need to set up a rental property market track targeting the 200 million rural migrants who already live and work in cities. Half of them currently live in dormitories provided by their employers, and the other half reside in illegally built housing in urban villages without good infrastructure or access to urban public services such as education for migrating children. I propose a reform that would allow rural communities in suburban villages of migrant-receiving cities to take their nonagricultural land onto the urban housing market under one condition: for the first 10 to 15 years, they could build properties used only for rental purposes. After the transitional period, those houses would gain full rights, and they could be sold directly on the housing market.

Land Lines: What are the advantages of this design?

Tao Ran: Insulating developable rural land in the rental market initially provides a cushion for the existing real estate market and prevents market panics and a bursting of the housing bubble. Merging the two tracks, however, would send speculators a credible signal that residential building prices will not rise further, and so the central government could phase out its strict regulations on real estate markets installed since 2010 to curb the housing bubble. Such a reform package would contribute to a healthy growth of the housing market. Moreover, granting rural communities development rights—even if those rights were restricted during the transition period—would open the legal channel for them to apply for development loans.

This opportunity would unleash a housing construction boom in urban villages and suburban areas and provide a lift for construction-related industries with significant overcapacity. Unlike the current housing bubble, this kind of real estate development is more socially beneficial and economically sustainable. Rural residents, particularly those living close to urban centers, would benefit directly. The growth in the rental property track also makes housing affordable for hundreds of millions of migrant workers, enabling them to settle in cities permanently. Urbanization has the potential to turn the Chinese economy away from the investment-driven model.

Land Lines: What is the key to the success of this reform?

Tao Ran: The attitude of local governments is critical. Their concern over revenues is perfectly legitimate and needs to be addressed in the reform package. Under the current system, local governments are burdened with too many spending responsibilities, and they lack adequate revenues. After the reform, they would have limited power of land requisition and lose the sizeable land lease fees and bank loans associated with that power. In the long run, municipalities should levy property taxes to generate a stable source of income for local public finance. Considering the strong resistance from wealthy and politically powerful residents of the cities introducing the property tax on a trial basis, however, it is unrealistic to expect this new tax to take effect soon.

I believe that another untapped source for local governments is underutilized industrial land. According to various reports, the floor-area ratio is only about 0.3 to 0.4 for industrial parks even in China’s developed areas. Through reorganization by negotiation, it is possible to double land development intensity and convert some industrial land for residential and commercial construction. Our estimates show that local governments would be more than compensated for giving up the power of land requisition, and they could also use these revenues to pay back the debts and avert a financial crisis.

At the current stage of development, no reform in the Chinese economy is going to be easy. One certainly should not have any illusions about a quick fix. But the proposed dual-track reform package offers some real hope of boosting domestic consumption and alleviating the overcapacity problem in many sectors. One particularly favorable factor for this reform is the new leadership’s emphasis on urbanization. Premier Li Keqiang has spent years on this issue and seems to have a genuine interest in achieving breakthroughs. This proposal may provide a realistic roadmap for such reforms.

Land Lines: What lessons can China teach?

Tao Ran: The Chinese model successfully effects growth. It also generates several negative consequences, such as the over-leveraging of land, social unrest resulting from land grabbing, environmental damages, and housing bubbles, which burden the urban population. The Chinese lesson is that for a country to grow, the government is essential; but that same government may overdo things and, in the long run, generate distortions that finally damage the sustainability of the economy and society.

El fortalecimiento de la salud fiscal municipal en China

Desde el año 2013, Zhi Liu se ha desempeñado como investigador senior y director del Programa para China del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo. También es director del Centro para el Desarrollo Urbano y Políticas de Suelo de la Universidad de Pekín y el Instituto Lincoln (PLC). Anteriormente, Zhi fue especialista principal en infraestructuras en el Banco Mundial, donde trabajó durante 18 años y obtuvo experiencia operativa en varios países en vías de desarrollo.

Zhi obtuvo el título de grado (BS) en Geografía Económica por la Universidad Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (China), el título de maestría (MS) en Planificación Municipal y Regional por la Universidad de Nanjing (China) y el título de doctorado (Ph.D.) en Planificación Urbana por la Universidad de Harvard.

LAND LINES: Hace poco el Instituto Lincoln comenzó un plan de investigación sobre la salud fiscal municipal en todo el mundo. Esta tarea surgió al detectar que algunas ciudades de los Estados Unidos y de muchos otros países, como China, enfrentan dificultades financieras. ¿Cuál es la naturaleza de los problemas fiscales municipales en China?

ZHI LIU: Es muy diferente de las dificultades económicas que enfrentan las ciudades de los Estados Unidos. Estos dos países se encuentran en etapas de urbanización muy distintas. Mientras que los EE.UU. tiene un alto nivel de urbanización (más del 80 por ciento de los ciudadanos vive en áreas urbanas), según el censo de 2010, China todavía está a medio camino del proceso de urbanización. Hoy en día, 750 millones de ciudadanos chinos viven en ciudades, lo que representa el 55 por ciento de la población total. Para el año 2050, se espera que la población urbana alcance 1,1 mil millones de habitantes, es decir, el 75 por ciento de la población total. En los últimos veinte años, con la excepción de unas pocas ciudades mineras, casi todos los municipios han experimentado un rápido crecimiento de la población y una expansión espacial, lo que ha generado una gran demanda de inversiones públicas en infraestructura urbana.

En China, las principales fuentes de financiamiento para inversiones en infraestructura urbana son los ingresos provenientes de las concesiones del suelo y los préstamos que los municipios solicitan a los bancos comerciales, por lo general usando el suelo como garantía. El suelo urbano es de propiedad del Estado, y el suelo rural es de propiedad conjunta de las aldeas. La Ley de Administración del Suelo establece que sólo el Estado tiene el poder para convertir suelo rural en suelo de uso urbano, lo que crea el marco propicio para que los gobiernos municipales tomen suelo rural con el fin de realizar un desarrollo urbano mediante el proceso de concesión del suelo. De hecho, los gobiernos municipales expropian el suelo rural, lo dotan de infraestructura y venden los derechos de uso del suelo a desarrolladores inmobiliarios. La compensación que reciben los agricultores por el suelo que se les expropia no es muy alta, ya que se calcula según el valor de producción agrícola del suelo en lugar del valor de mercado del suelo para uso urbano. Cuando la demanda de desarrollo inmobiliario es alta, los precios de licitación para la concesión del suelo son altos, y los gobiernos municipales comienzan a recaudar grandes sumas de dinero. En los últimos diez años, los ingresos derivados de las concesiones del suelo han representado más de un tercio del total de los ingresos fiscales municipales.

Además, los gobiernos municipales expanden aun más su capacidad financiera mediante la utilización de propiedades de suelo a modo de garantías con el fin de obtener préstamos de los bancos comerciales. La Ley de Presupuesto Chino, antes de una reciente modificación, no permitía que los gobiernos municipales solicitaran préstamos. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los gobiernos municipales superó las restricciones de la ley mediante la creación de sus propios vehículos financieros municipales, conocidos como sociedades anónimas de inversión en desarrollo urbano (sociedades anónimas de inversión en desarrollo urbano, UDIC, por sus siglas en inglés). Las UDIC solicitaban préstamos comerciales o emitían bonos privados para los gobiernos. Las deudas municipales pendientes de pago han crecido rápidamente en los últimos años, y en la actualidad han alcanzado al menos un tercio del PIB.

El mecanismo de financiamiento basado en el suelo ha ayudado a los gobiernos municipales de China a recaudar una suma significativa de fondos destinados a la inversión de capital. No obstante, este éxito también ha generado un incentivo para que los gobiernos municipales dependan demasiado de las concesiones del suelo y de las UDIC. Hoy en día, la economía de China crece mucho más lentamente que antes, por lo que este mecanismo está perdiendo fuerza en muchos municipios donde la conversión del suelo rural en suelo de uso urbano excede la demanda real. Algunas ciudades han obtenido más préstamos de los que podían devolver, y han quedado fuertemente endeudadas.

Según muchos estudios empíricos, incluidos algunos financiados por el Instituto Lincoln, el mecanismo de financiamiento basado en el suelo en China es una de las principales causas de otros problemas urbanos que enfrentamos en la actualidad, tales como precios exorbitantes de la vivienda, deudas municipales en aumento, excesiva expropiación del suelo, creciente tensión entre agricultores y gobiernos municipales en torno a la expropiación del suelo, y brechas cada vez mayores en la distribución de los ingresos y la riqueza entre las poblaciones urbanas y las rurales.

LL: Los medios de comunicación internacionales han estado realizando informes acerca de estos problemas. ¿De qué manera afrontará China estas cuestiones?

ZL: Existe un alto nivel de consenso acerca de las causas profundas de estos problemas. En noviembre de 2013, el gobierno central anunció una serie de reformas, algunas de las cuales están directamente relacionadas con políticas de urbanización y finanzas municipales. Por ejemplo, los alcances de las expropiaciones del suelo se limitarán a los fines públicos, por lo que las aldeas podrán desarrollar su suelo para uso urbano según la premisa de que se realice de acuerdo con lo planificado. Las reformas también requieren la aceleración de la legislación sobre el impuesto a la propiedad, la reforma del hukou (el sistema de inscripción residencial para familias, que ayuda a los agricultores a convertirse en residentes urbanos) y la toma de medidas por parte del gobierno para poner los servicios públicos urbanos básicos a disposición de todos los residentes permanentes de las ciudades, incluso a los que migran del suelo rural al urbano.

LL: ¿Cuáles son los efectos de la reforma del hukou en las finanzas municipales?

ZL: El gobierno chino está eliminando gradualmente el antiguo sistema del hukou, y los efectos de esta decisión sobre las finanzas municipales serán importantes. El hukou se diseñó con el fin de identificar a un ciudadano como residente de una cierta ciudad, aunque durante décadas el gobierno utilizó este sistema para controlar la migración de áreas rurales a urbanas. Una persona inscrita como hukou rural no podía cambiar su inscripción a hukou urbano sin la autorización del gobierno. Y sin la inscripción como hukou urbano, un trabajador rural migrante no tiene derecho a recibir los servicios públicos que proporcionan los gobiernos urbanos.

A partir de la reforma económica, la economía urbana en expansión ha absorbido una gran cantidad de trabajadores migrantes que pasan de áreas rurales a urbanas. Anteriormente mencioné que el índice de urbanización de China es del 55 por ciento y que la población urbana es de 750 millones de habitantes. Estas cifras incluyen a los 232 millones de trabajadores rurales migrantes que permanecen en ciudades durante más de la mitad del año. Si se los excluyera del cálculo, el nivel de urbanización sería sólo del 38 por ciento. Sin embargo, debido a su inscripción como hukou rural, los trabajadores migrantes no tienen acceso a muchos de los servicios de los que gozan los inscritos como hukou urbano, a pesar de que muchos han trabajado y vivido en ciudades durante varios años. Los gobiernos municipales determinan el alcance de muchos de los servicios públicos urbanos, tales como las escuelas públicas y las viviendas económicas, de acuerdo con la cantidad de inscritos como hukou urbanos que existen dentro de la jurisdicción municipal. La eliminación gradual del hukou aumentaría significativamente la carga fiscal de los gobiernos municipales para proporcionar servicios públicos. Ciertos académicos en China estiman que el costo de prestar la totalidad de los servicios públicos urbanos a cada trabajador rural migrante ascendería al menos a RMB 100.000 (unos US$16.000). El desembolso total para todos los trabajadores rurales migrantes actuales sería al menos de RMB 23 billones (cerca de US$3,8 billones).

LL: China está introduciendo el impuesto sobre la propiedad residencial. ¿En qué estado se encuentra esta iniciativa?

ZL: El gobierno está redactando la primera ley nacional del impuesto sobre la propiedad como parte de la reforma de finanzas públicas actualmente en marcha. China es uno de los pocos países que no poseen impuestos municipales sobre la propiedad. El actual sistema impositivo depende en gran manera de los impuestos sobre los negocios y las transacciones y muy poco de los impuestos sobre los ingresos y la riqueza de los hogares. En una China más urbanizada con una población que tenga mayor poder adquisitivo para ser propietaria de sus propios inmuebles residenciales, el impuesto sobre la propiedad sería una fuente más viable de recaudación municipal. Hoy en día, el 89 por ciento de los hogares urbanos tiene la propiedad de una o más unidades residenciales, y el valor de dichas propiedades tiene mucho que ver con los servicios públicos urbanos. El impuesto sobre la propiedad permitirá que las ciudades impongan este tributo sobre las propiedades residenciales cuyo valor se vería beneficiado por una mejora de los servicios públicos que se brindarían gracias a los ingresos derivados de dicho impuesto. También cubriría una parte de la brecha fiscal que se generaría como consecuencia de la disminución prevista en la recaudación proveniente de las concesiones del suelo. No obstante, el impuesto sobre la propiedad no será una fuente principal de ingresos municipales en el corto plazo, ya que al Congreso Popular Nacional le llevará uno o dos años más aprobar la nueva ley. Además, a las ciudades les llevará dos o tres años establecer la base de datos de propiedades y el sistema de valuación y administración de las mismas.

LL: Debe de ser difícil para las ciudades tener que enfrentar una reducción de los ingresos derivados de las concesiones del suelo sin una alternativa inmediata, especialmente cuando están experimentando una creciente deuda municipal, tal como se ha informado ampliamente. ¿Cómo saldrán de esta situación las ciudades chinas?

ZL: La situación es verdaderamente difícil. La economía de China está en retroceso. El sector inmobiliario ya no es tan pujante como en los últimos diez años, lo que ha dado como resultado una menor demanda de suelo y, como consecuencia, los gobiernos municipales están obteniendo una recaudación derivada de las concesiones de suelo menor. Ahora las ciudades están experimentando una brecha fiscal. Una posible forma de cerrar esta brecha sería que los gobiernos municipales pudieran obtener préstamos. Sin embargo, tal como mencioné anteriormente, muchas ciudades están endeudadas y tienen poca capacidad para seguir pidiendo préstamos. De hecho, la mayoría de las ciudades en China no tiene una capacidad adecuada de gestión de deudas. La ley de presupuesto recientemente modificada permite que los gobiernos provinciales emitan bonos dentro de los límites establecidos por el Concejo del Estado, pero también cierra la posibilidad a los gobiernos municipales de recurrir a otras formas de obtener préstamos. Actualmente, el gobierno central promueve activamente el financiamiento de infraestructura a través de asociaciones público-privadas (PPP, por sus siglas en inglés). Aunque es un buen avance, no será suficiente para cerrar la brecha de financiamiento para infraestructuras, ya que las PPP resultan útiles principalmente en los casos de proyectos de infraestructura que poseen un sólido flujo de ingresos. Existen muchos otros proyectos de infraestructura urbana que generan muy pocos ingresos o directamente ninguno. A la larga, creo que China debería establecer de forma activa un mercado de bonos del gobierno municipal para canalizar los fondos provenientes de inversores institucionales hacia la inversión de infraestructura municipal y permitir que los gobiernos municipales tengan acceso a préstamos comerciales según su solvencia crediticia. A este fin, los gobiernos municipales deben desarrollar su capacidad institucional en varios frentes, tales como la gestión municipal de deudas, la planificación de una mejora de capital, la planificación del financiamiento para varios años, y la gestión municipal de bienes de infraestructura.

LL: ¿El trabajo del PLC es relevante para la reforma actual?

ZL: El PLC fue establecido en forma conjunta por el Instituto Lincoln y la Universidad de Pekín en el año 2007. Cuando ingresé en 2013, el Centro ya había construido su reputación como una de las principales instituciones de investigación y capacitación de China en cuestiones de desarrollo urbano y políticas de suelo. El Centro apoya diferentes actividades, como investigación, capacitación, intercambio académico, diálogo sobre políticas, becas de investigación, proyectos de demostración y publicaciones. Nos enfocamos en cinco temas principales: tributación sobre la propiedad y finanzas municipales, políticas de suelo, viviendas urbanas, desarrollo y planificación urbana, y medio ambiente urbano y su conservación. En los últimos años, nuestros proyectos de investigación han tocado temas como las finanzas dependientes del suelo, las deudas municipales, los precios de la vivienda, la inversión y el financiamiento del capital para infraestructura, y otras cuestiones relevantes para la salud fiscal municipal. Además, hemos brindado capacitación a diferentes agencias gubernamentales de China sobre las experiencias internacionales relativas al análisis y gestión del impuesto a la propiedad. Podría decirse que nuestro trabajo es muy pertinente en lo que respecta a la reforma actual.

La implementación de las nuevas reformas integrales de las políticas está generando una importante demanda de conocimientos internacionales y asesoramiento sobre políticas en las áreas de interés del programa para China, particularmente lo que tiene que ver con los impuestos a la propiedad y las finanzas municipales. Nuestra idea es comenzar un proyecto piloto de demostración en una o dos ciudades chinas seleccionadas, a fin de generar la capacidad institucional que se requiere para desarrollar un nivel de salud fiscal municipal a largo plazo. Nuestro equipo ha comenzado un estudio para desarrollar una serie de indicadores con el fin de medir la salud fiscal municipal de las ciudades chinas. Es el momento oportuno para que iniciemos este plan en China.