Economy

The challenge of millions on the move

By Andrew Moody and Chen Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-18 10:35

"The key is to build basic infrastructure and provide job opportunities locally, to ease the traffic pressure from workers moving between areas all the time," he said.

He said it was important there was still a focus on rural areas rather just rural migration into the cities.

"It is important to balance the urban and rural development. Lots of the rural labor force will be transferred to cities during the urbanization process. But you have to remember that agriculture is still a major primary industry and will remain a main determinant of the Chinese economy in the future," he added.

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, and professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, argues urbanisation is becoming something of a muddied issue.

"In many parts of the country it is difficult to draw a line between what is a rural and an urban area. Even in rural areas there are very few families where at least one family member isn't working in a city, at least for part of the year," he said.

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China's urbanization process remains a unique event in history. Never before have so many people moved from the countryside to cities. In just over a generation China has moved from being a largely agrarian society to urbanization levels of more than 40 percent.

Britain, the first industrial nation, took 80 years to achieve this more than 200 years ago and the United States needed 80 years. Policymakers are having to cope with challenges never dealt with before.

Li at Tsinghua University said it is a steep learning curve for everyone but he believes smaller sustainable cities are part of the solution.

"It is an inevitable trend to develop small cities around large ones such as Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing. They don't even have to be satellite cities but can form long ribbons, depending on the local geographic situation," he said.

But he warns climate damage remains the big headache for everyone.

"The current development model uses up significant fossil energy and can create severe pollution. These problems provide a bottleneck to the urbanization process," he said.