Rural-urban migration is playing an increasingly important role in shaping the economic and demographic landscape of Chinese cities. Over the past two decades, China has transformed itself from a relatively immobile society to one in which more than 10 percent of the population are migrants.

China's mobility rate is still low compared with that of advanced industrial economies, the sheer size of the migrant flows and their dramatic economic and social consequences have already profoundly affected economic growth and urban development. Looking ahead, decision makers at all levels will need to craft policies that address issues of migration and rural-urban migrants issues that are hotly debated among scholars, Chinese policy makers, and others.

This report presents recent findings that describe migration patterns and changes since the 1980s.

China today is at a midpoint in the largest rural-to-urban migration in history. This transformation from a rural to a predominantly urban society poses enormous challenges and opportunities for China. This book of essays by outstanding scholars of China and urbanization is among the fi rst to look at this process comprehensively. It will inform both outsiders desiring a better understanding of Chinese urbanization and insiders directly involved in trying to strengthen the policies and institutions that are shaping this transformation. 
— Dwight H. Perkins

Harold Hitchings Burbank Research Professor of Political Economy, Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Of all the challenges China faces—including unemployment, environmental stress, inequality, and weak banks—rapid urbanization is the greatest, and it lies at the confl uence of the others. This volume examines each problem of urbanization—inequality, poverty, finance, energy, water, and governance—with a balance rare in a field dominated by China hype and China bashing. The authors explain how China’s cities managed to absorb 370 million immigrants in 25 years without becoming Lagos or Mumbai, but also emphasize the daunting hurdles ahead. Saich notes both that over 80 percent of China’s people approve of the central government’s performance and catalogs pervasive governance failures and weaknesses. The scholar who refl ects deeply on the introductory summary will understand more about China’s development than the reader of a shelf of more specialized or emotional books on China.
— William H. Overholt
Chair and Director, RAND Center for Asia Pacifi c Policy, Santa Monica, California

Asia Programs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, promotes public policy education and training throughout Asia. Asia Programs integrates the School’s Asia-related activities, generates and strengthens scholarly analysis of public policy challenges in the Asia region, and seeks to enhance Asia’s capacity for good governance in the 21st century.

Download China Urbanizes: Consequences, Strategies, and Policies

PDF format, 1.39MB, 230Pages.

Shahid Yusuf, Tony Saich

2008 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
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Washington DC 20433
Telephone: 202-473-1000

Visit China Urbanizes: Consequences, Strategies, and Policies Download Page

Contents:

Preface ix
Contributors xi
Abbreviations xiii
Chapter 1 Optimizing Urban Development 1
Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima
Chapter 2 Rural–Urban Inequality in China 41
Albert Park
Chapter 3 Migration, Hukou, and the City 65
C. Cindy Fan
Chapter 4 Poverty and Vulnerability 91
John G. Taylor
Chapter 5 Finance for Urban Centers 105
Patrick Honohan
Chapter 6 Energy Policy 125
Edward S. Steinfeld
Chapter 7 Water and Urbanization 157
Zmarak Shalizi
Chapter 8 The Changing Role of Urban Government 181
Tony Saich

Preface:

Urbanization and urban development will leave a deep imprint on structural, social, and economic change in China for decades to come. In 2007 the urban share of China’s population was almost 44 percent, and the urban economy accounted for nearly 80 percent of domestic output. Both these percentages will be rising, the first steeply, the second much more gently, because the urban sector is already the dominant economic force.

Given these changes, the urban dimension figures prominently in China’s 11th Five-Year Plan. Urban issues were also central to the World Bank’s study, China’s Development Priorities, by Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima, prepared in close consultation with China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The chapters in this volume were initially prepared for that study. They were subsequently revised and updated in order to incorporate feedback received in seminars and discussions in China and to reflect the latest research.

The chapters, all written by leading specialists on China, examine key facets of the urbanization process, highlighting both the challenges for and options open to policy makers. By stitching together the implications of migration, poverty, urban financing, governance, energy use, and water consumption, the chapters provide an integrated perspective on the recent past and the medium-term outlook for urban change in China.

We are deeply grateful to the U. K. Department for International Development (DfID) and the Asia Programs at Harvard University for generous financial support, without which the preparation and publication of this volume would not have been possible. We thank David Dollar, Bert Hofman, the staff of the NDRC, Jianqing Chen, and Julian Chang for the support they provided throughout this study. We also greatly appreciate the efforts of Marinella Yadao and Rebecca Sugui in helping us prepare the manuscript; our editors Stuart Tucker and Patricia Katayama; and our production manager Mary Fisk. Finally, we thank the contributors to this volume for their patience and perseverance in revising their chapters, and Kaoru Nabeshima, who helped us shepherd the study since its inception and who contributed substantively to the volume’s structure and content.

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