The next ten years crucial for the transformation of urbanization in China

International Symposium on the theme of “Urbanization in Transitional Period” held in Beijing

Author  :       Source  :    Chinese Social Sciences Today     2013-10-16

<div class=TRS_Editor><p align="justify">As the Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz said, the urbanization in China and the high-tech development in the United States will be the two keys to influence the human development in the 21st century deeply.</p><p align="justify">It can thus be seen that China’s urbanization is not only vitally important to the development of China, but also has global significance.</p><p align="justify">On the 25th of September, an International Symposium on the theme of “Urbanization in Transitional Period: International Experience and Prospects for China” was held in Beijing, sponsored by the Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies (IUES) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).</p><p align="justify">Helen Clark, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program, once commented that China's urbanization has been breathtaking. It took just 60 years for the country's urbanization rate to leap from 10 percent to 50 percent. The same achievement took 150 years in Europe and 210 years in Latin America.</p><p align="justify">According to the “China National Human Development Report 2013”, produced by the United Nations Development Program and the IUES of CASS, China’s urbanization rate will reach 70% by 2030, when its urban population will exceed one billion. From this figure it can be concluded that China will continue to urbanize rapidly.</p><p align="justify">However China’s urbanization will hit a ceiling in future, Wei Houkai, the Deputy Director of IUES, said during the forum.</p><p align="justify">“By 2050, when the urbanization rate approaches 85%, China’s urban-rural structure, demographic composition and space structure will all be stabilized,” added Wei.</p><p align="justify">Along with the fast progress of urbanization, however, the problems underlying urban development are gradually presenting themselves too.</p><p align="justify">Li Peilin, the Vice-President of CASS, said that the flocking of hundreds of millions of rural people into cities has posed a grave challenge to urban society.</p><p align="justify">Despite an urbanization rate of 52.57% in 2012, close to the world average, the immigrant workers included in the statistics for urban population as well as their families fail to enjoy basic public services equal to those of the urban residents in such areas as education, employment, and health care.</p><p align="justify">The current systems in place for household registration, land administration, social security, finance and taxation and administrative management have, to some extent, solidified the existing imbalance between urban and rural conditions, hindered the rural people from integrating into the cities and constrained the integrated development of urban and rural areas.</p><p align="justify">Promoting the integration of the rural migrant population into the cities is therefore the core task for improving the quality of urbanization.</p><p align="justify">“The next ten years is a critical period for China to escape the ‘middle-income trap’,” said Zheng Bingwen, the Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies of CASS.</p><p align="justify">Drawing a lesson from Latin America’s excessive urbanization, Zheng predicted that “if China can maintain a moderate growth rate, it will double its per capita income by 2020 and take the third leap forward”.</p>&nbsp;<p align="justify">&nbsp;</p><p align="right"><em>Translated by</em> Chen Mirong</p><p align="right"><em>Revised by</em> Gabriele Corsetti</p></div>

Editor: Chen Meina