2014-15 Canada-China Business Forum Magazine | Page 62

CHINA’S
URBANIZATION
IN CONTEXT

What’s in Store for
Canadian Companies

Over the past few years, endless
accounts of China’s urban
transition have filled headlines
and topped bestseller lists.
The numbers support a tale
of unprecedented social and
economic change. In 1978, at the
outset of market reforms, China’s
urban population stood at 17.9 per
cent of the total population. By the
end of 2012 it had grown to 52.6
per cent of the total population,
representing a 35 per cent increase
in just over three decades.

by JESSICA WILCZAK

T

his March, China’s leaders
revealed a new national
urbanization plan that would
move another 100 million
people into cities by 2020. The
announcement comes after
three decades of headlinegrabbing growth. China’s urban
population grew by 500 million
– from under 20 per cent of
total population in 1978 to 52.6
per cent by the end of 2012.
The Chinese government
wants to raise this figure to
60 per cent over the next six
years through a combination of
infrastructure investment, social
policy reform and changes in
local government financing.

testing/Shutterstock

Although this seems like a
shocking leap, Japan and South
Korea went through similar jumps
after the Second World War.
South Korea’s urban population
jumped by 50 per cent between
1960 and 1990. In absolute terms,
China now has the world’s largest
urban population at over 600
million. But as a proportion of
China’s total population, 52.6 per
cent falls far short of the OECD
average of 80 per cent in 2013.
Furthermore, China’s rate of
urbanization has slowed in recent
years, leading researchers with
the Economist Intelligence Unit to
predict that China will not hit the
80 per cent mark until 2080.

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The plan also represents a new
positive approach to cities.
Since the Mao era, the Central
government has tried to control
population movement through
household registrations or
hukou that tie every family to a
fixed place of residence and an
agricultural or non-agricultural
status. This system has helped
prevent the growth of urban
slums in Chinese cities. At the

So what makes the National NewType Urbanization Plan (2014-2020)
different from the more or less
unplanned urbanization of the
past three decades? First, the plan
is meant to generate a significant
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FORUM

BUSINESS

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same time it has also created
a large underclass (estimated
at 236 million in 2012) that,
lacking an urban hukou, cannot
access public services like health
care and education. Yet with
urban residents earning over
three times more than their
rural counterparts, the tide
of rural migration has proven
difficult to stem.
The new plan will make
China’s urbanization process
more inclusive and “humancentred” by increasing th