There has been a significant transformation in the model of urbanization in post-reform China, a society
dominated by a large rural population but with accelerated industrialization and development. This paper
argues that a comprehensive dual-track urbanization approach is more realistic for the study of
urbanization in the transitional economy of post-reform China with mixed characters of an old planned
economy and an emerging market economy. The dual-track model of urbanization is a significant
departure from the Maoist model of Chinese urbanization. This paper discusses the emerging political
economy of dual-track urbanization in post-reform China. This is followed by an examination of the
development and urbanization in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. The trend of dual-track urbanization
and its implications on spatial development in the PRD are analyzed by making use of the population data
from 2000 census. A dispersed urbanization process with selective concentration in new growing SEZ cities
in the 1980s and 1990s is revealed. But a new trend of concentrated state sponsored urbanization towards
major urban centres has emerged in the PRD since the late 1990s. The complicated realities revealed in this
analysis challenge the existing theories of city-based or town-based urbanization.