Since the adoption of its well-known reform and open-door policies in 1978, China has
experienced dramatic economic growth in the last decades. From 1978 to 2000, China’s GDP
increased 7.4 times with an average growth rate of 9.6%. In 2000, the GDP per capita in
China reached 7080 yuan RMB or about 850 US dollars, and the share of the second and
tertiary industries in the composition of the GDP and total employees is respectively 84.1%
and 50% while the proportion of urban population to the total population is relatively low,
only 36.09%. In contrast to its rapid industrialization and economic development, China’s
urbanization has proceeded more slowly over the last 20 years.
Recently the serious negative impacts of under-urbanization began to be widely recognized.
Some key problems in China’s current social and economic development, such as inadequate
domestic demand, unduly low income of farmers, and sluggish growth and great pressure on
employment, are to a large extent attributable to the lagging urbanization. The process of
urbanization is considered to be the center of China’s economic development in the next
phase (G.. Fan, 2001). The Chinese government has realized that active promotion of the
urbanization process is of great importance to facilitating Chinese economic restructuring and
propelling sustained and rapid economic growth, and has therefore defined it as one of the
strategic priorities of China’s economic development during the 10th Five Year Plan period.
It has becomes a common consensus that the most headachy “agriculture, farmers and rural
areas” (three nong) problems in China are unable to be solved by farmers themselves, inside
the agriculture sector and rural areas. Promotion of the urbanization process is needed to help
more rural surplus labor forces seek employment in non-agricultural activities and in cities
and towns, serving the purpose of reducing the agricultural population, improving agricultural
productivity and increasing the farmers’ income. In summary, reducing rural population
through active promotion of urbanization is considered to be the only best way to make
farmers rich. Thus, the prospects and scenarios of China’s urbanization and rural-urban
migration are bound to have tremendous impacts on its agricultural development and policy
making.
The main purpose of this report is to understand the development trend of China’s
urbanization and rural-urban migration and to formulate alternative urbanization scenarios in
the next 30 years, through investigating and assessing its historic trajectory, current situation
and policies and prospects of influential factors in the future. It is composed of seven parts.
The following Part 2 introduces different definitions on urban places and urban population
and various statistical data series in China, facilitating the readers understanding of
urbanization in China. Part 3 divides the historical trajectory of China’s urbanization and rural-urban migration over the past 50 years into five periods. Part 4 deals with the unique
characteristics of urbanization in China. Part 5 proceeds to the types, driving forces and
socio-economic features of rural-urban migration in China. Part 6 presents the projections of
China’s urbanization level at national and provincial levels by regression models. Part 7 is the
prospects and scenarios of China’s urbanization and rural-urban migration in the next 30 years
under different assumptions on the achievements of its market-oriented institutional reforms.