Evolution and assessment on China's urbanization 1960–2010: Under-urbanization or over-urbanization?

Abstract

There has been a significant transformation in the urbanization and economic growth in post-reform China. The nature and degree of urbanization is a subject of some controversy. This paper examines empirical data for 110 counties and employs a quadrant plots method involving estimation of several parameters to analyze empirically the evolvement of urbanization in China during 1960–2010. There are three periods of China's urbanization in the pattern of world, which is the rapid decline stage (1960–1978), the stable stage of ascension (1979–1995) and rapid promotion stage (1996–2010). Over the entire period, compared to the rest of the world, urbanization and economic growth in China appears to be coordinated and at moderate levels. However, China's urbanization process has progressed faster than economic growth since 2004, and it is right time that China should rethink under-urbanization and it's countermeasure in development strategy. And the core of new stage of urbanization is to improve the quality of urbanization and to take little count of urbanization quantity.

Introduction

World urbanization trends have been irreversible since the second half of the 20th century. The world's population is increasingly found in the cities. According to a report of world urbanization prospects by United Nations, more than half of the world's population lived in urban areas by the end of 2008 (UNPD, 2010). Generally, levels of urbanization are closely correlated with levels of economic development (Henderson, 2003). Demographic processes of immigration and emigration are important determinants of urbanization, but these are in turn underpinned by other processes, especially economic change. Developed countries are considered to experience “parallel-urbanization”, achieving high industrial growth and a parallel increase in the degree of urbanization. Most of these countries have entered the third stage of urbanization, and the urbanization level has stabilized. The focus of world urbanization had shifted to the developing world. Developed and the developing countries pursue two different paths: in developed countries urbanization and economic development were synchronized, whereas developing counties over- and under-urbanization is common. A great deal of literature has been generated dealing with the special characteristics of “over-urbanization” or “excessive-urbanization, common phenomena and processes of formation, and the new challenges posed by developing countries (Cohen, 2006; Henderson, 2002; Skeldon, 1999). The conclusions of this research have led to a basic consensus. However, China's road to urbanization has been thought of as unique for it is neither identical with that of the developed economies nor does it duplicate the path of developing countries (Zhang & Zhao, 2003), posing a puzzling riddle. In recent decades, a great amount of ink has been spilled by planners, economists, and geographers to paint a picture of China's urbanization (Chen & Gao, 2011; Friedmann, 2006; Lin, 1998, 2007; Shen, 2005, 2006). Interestingly, as research opinions vary, no unanimous conclusion can be drawn about China's urbanization level. Some hold that in both the pre-reform era and the period of economic transition, China has tried to restrict rural–urban migration and the number of people entitled to an urban citizenship, while its economic growth seems impressive. Despite very dynamic recent rural–urban migration, official figures as well as academic estimates of the level of urbanization remain low. Indeed, China's under-urbanization grew in the recent period of reform, the reason being that economic growth outpaced urbanization (Chang & Brada, 2006). However, others believe that China has been eliminating this urbanization gap during the post-1978 period as a result of its economic reforms. China's urban population increased dramatically from 170 million in 1978 to 670 million in 2010 and the urban share of the total population rose from a mere 18%–50%. The most noticeable evidence associated with China's over-urbanization is the dramatic increases in the number of peasant workers (nongmingong in Chinese) and urbanization of land (Lu et al., 2007). Although much effort is being spent examining China's urbanization, it is clear that there is no shortage of controversy, and that quantitative assessments are difficult (Zhang & Zhao, 2003). There are two critical problems to be solved: one is identifying a perspective for the study of dynamic evolutions; the other is developing a quantitative method to assess effectively the relationship between levels of urbanization and economic development level.

In a cross-country panel data context, the purpose of this paper is to design a quantitative analytical frame work and to come up with a better understanding of the evolution of China's urbanization. The paper is organized as follows. The next section will introduce the research data and method. In section three, the evolution of China's urbanization is analyzed along three dimensions are examined. This will be followed by a discussion of three viewpoints relating to the assessment of China's urbanization. Some conclusions are reached in the final section.