Environment and Planning A 2002, volume 34, pages 1571 ^ 1589
DOI:10.1068/a34201
China's continuing urban transition
Clifton W Pannell
Department of Geography and Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA: e-mail:
[email protected] Received 28 September 2001; in revised form 20 March 2002
Abstract. Urban growth in China has proceeded in step with the growth and transition of the socialist economy. Year 2000 Census data indicate an urban population of 456 million; this is 36% of the total population and is increasing much more rapidly than the overall population. Several factors drive this rapid urbanization and growth of cities and towns: continuing, although diminishing, population growth; migration of rural people, as regulations on rural and urban household registration change; rapid structural shift in employment activities and the decline of farm employment; foreign trade and foreign investment, especially in coastal areas; restructuring of state-owned enterprises and growth of private enterprises and activities; and allocation of domestic funds in fixed assets for urban infrastructure, also concentrated in coastal areas. Key issues for continuing urbanization focus on the capacity of the emerging private sector in parallel with the state and collective sectors to generate new jobs, and the willingness of the central state to reconcile the subsidies and privileges of state-sector urban employees with other recent migrants in cities and towns who do not enjoy the state-sector subsidies.
China has the world's largest urban population ö456 million people according to the recently completed year 2000 Census ödespite the fact that only 36% of its people live in cities and towns and the country has only recently entered an accelerating phase of its urban transition, as seen in figure 1. This transition, according to a simple model derived from the experience of other advanced industrial countries, including Japan, should slow or end when approximately 75% of China's people live in urban places sometime in the 21st century (Cadwallader, 1996; Northam, 1979; Oshima, 1987;
80 Terminal stage 60 Acceleration stage 40 Initial stage
20
x
x
x 2000 x 1995
90 19 5 8 19 0 8 19 75 19 69 19 4 6 19 58 19 53 19
Urban population as percentage of total population
100
x
x x x x x
Time
Figure 1. China's urbanization level in the context of the urbanization curve (ö) and stages of urbanization (x ^ x urbanization level and year).
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Zhong, 2000). By the term `urban transition', I refer to the movement of China's people from rural to urban locations; the shift of their work activities to things normally associated with urban locations, such as manufacturing and various service activities; and the changing nature of their lifestyles in cities and towns (Ginsburg, 1990; McGee, 1991; Pannell, 1995; Y M Yeung, 1998). While viewing China's urban transition in the broad context of development and urbanization generally and globally, it is also instructive and appropriate to conceive of it as a socialist urban transition, as Chan (1994) has ably pointed out. This is an event and process of great significance to China's domestic development and modernization. At the same time, it must be seen as one of the great social and economic changes of the 21st century; the size and scale of this unfolding urban transition is unprecedented in human history. Therefore, its trajectory, its pace, and the conditions of its changes as well as the meanings of these are of consequence to all of us. As with so many things in China, what happens in this urban transition will affect global conditions in ways that we may not yet perceive and can only guess at. But it is time to ask not only what are the human and physical dimensions of this urban transition, but also what are the driving forces behind it, and what are the likely directions it will take and the consequences it will have for China and for the rest of the world. My goals in this paper are to identify major driving forces in this urban transition during the socialist period after 1949; and to examine related processes of demographic, social, and economic changes and relevant policies of the central state. Salient forces of broad transition are examined and explained, although I make no effort to include changes in the internal structure of the cities such as land use, urban circulation, and suburban development. Data on which I substantiate my argument include tabular material as well as some data noted in the narrative text. Most of these data are drawn from official sources such as the China Statistical Yearbook. The most recent data, from the November 2000 Census, were either reported in newspapers or are taken from official websites of Chinese agencies. Two graphs are constructed from these primary data, and maps are provided. Several of the tables provide spatial data, and three maps are included which were derived from these data. They are included to illustrate the striking and continuing patterns of spatial disparity that are discussed in the text. As I seek to elucidate in this paper, China's urban transition is advancing in step with internal processes of economic reform and restructuring which were set in motion in the late 1970s. A related crucial aspect of these reforms has been the opening of China to ongoing processes of global economic change, although this opening has occurred under the watchful guidance and political control of the central stateöa process that I will examine as I explain the country's urban transition within the framework of its larger transition from socialism (Lin, 2000). Urban size and scale China's continuing urban transition must be viewed as one salient part of a broader set of processes of economic and social change that are both national and global in scope and operation. The ongoing transition of China's socialist economy has a powerful and fundamental urban character and scope, for many of the key actors and most of the policies and strategies are urban derived and/or urban based (Chan, 1994; Naughton, 1995; Shen, 2000). At the recently concluded (March, 2001) National People's Congress, economic planners accepted and clearly stated the coming reality of China as an urban nation as it modernizes and develops its economy and society. Yet the reality of a national population of 1.3 billion raises serious questions about the capacity of the country's current fiscal resources to sustain an urban population of 700 millionöa
China's continuing urban transition
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projected goal that appears to be imminent in the next fifteen years. The size and scale of China's coming urban transition remind us of the special nature and conditions of Chinese development, and of the importance of keeping in mind that the character of this urbanization and urbanism suggests special questions and challenges for all concerned (Zhong, 2000). Consider the sheer human scale and the recent growth in urban population as seen in table 1 and figure 2. At the beginning of the socialist period, in 1953, China had only 78 million living in citiesöapproximately 13% of the total population (Kirkby, 1985). Although this number initially grew rapidly, the central government quickly put strict measures in place to control movement of its rural citizens to urban areas, and in this way slowed the growth of the urban population. During the late 1960s, because of Table 1. Demographic and urban trends in China, 1953 ^ 2000 (source: NBS, 2000; South China Morning Post March 2001). Year
Total population (million)
Birth rate (per thousand)
Growth rate (net natural increase per 1000)
Urban population (million)
Urban share (%)
1953 1958 1964 1969 1975 1978 1980 1982 1985 1990 1993 1996 1999 2000
587.96 659.94 704.99 806.71 924.20 962.59 987.05 1 016.54 1 058.51 1 143.33 1 185.17 1 123.89 1 259.09 1 265.00
37.00 29.22 39.14 34.11 23.01 18.25 18.21 22.28 21.04 21.06 18.00 16.98 15.23
23.00 17.24 27.64 26.08 15.69 12.00 11.87 15.68 14.26 14.39 11.45 10.42 8.77
78.26 107.21 129.50 141.17 160.30 172.45 191.40 214.80 250.90 301.91 333.51 359.50 388.92 455.94
13.31 16.25 18.37 17.50 17.34 17.92 19.39 21.13 23.71 26.41 28.41 29.37 30.89 36.09
X X
300
200 150
X
X
X
an
b Ur
h
wt
gro
1500
X
100
1960
1970
1980 1990
2000
95 19 93 19
1950
1000
on
lati
u Pop
X
10
X
X
X
X
100
Figure 2. China's population and urban growth, 1953 ^ 2000.
Total population (millions)
Urban population (millions)
400
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the chaotic social conditions, the urban share of the population actually declined as the government forced people out of cities and into the countryside. Urban growth then returned with improved economic conditions, and by 1975 the urban population had reached 160 million but accounted for only 17% of the total population owing to the very rapid overall population growth. Three years later, as the new economic reforms were being put in place, the urban population had increased to 172 million ö18% of the total population. The urban population has grown steadily and rapidly ever since, its growth being commensurate with the steady and rapid growth of China's economy as it has reformed and begun to open to the global economy (figure 2). Urbanization, as a process of the increase in numbers of people in cities and towns, may occur in several ways: (1) a high rate of births well in excess of deaths in existing urban places leads to a high rate of natural increase in cities; (2) rapid migration to urban places; and (3) the creation of new urban places, either through processes of economic generation or through administrative reclassification of places previously deemed nonurbanösuch as rural townships or villages. In China, owing to rigorous family-planning rules which are strictly administered in cities, the fast urban growth of the last twenty-five years must largely have come about through migration and the creation (or reclassification to urban status) of new cities and towns from formerly nonurban townships and villages. For example, in 1990 China had 458 cities of all sizes as classified by the State Statistical Bureau, 96 of which had fewer than 300 000 residents. By 1999, the government reported 667 cities of which 365 had fewer than 200 000 nonagricultural population in urban districts (NBS, 2000). As with most countries, China has debated the question of what is urban and what is not. Perhaps the clearest distinction arrived at is between people classified as agricultural and those classified as nonagricultural. Most Chinese cities include substantial agricultural land within their administrative boundaries. Districts within the city may be classified as urban or suburban, or as outer areas whose people are predominantly farmers and thus are not counted as properly urban. Moreover, in recent years fast economic growth and restructuring have brought rapid change in the internal structure of cities, as migrants as well as permanent residents move to the growing suburban areas around the built-up cores of large cities (Zhou and Ma, 2000). As a result, the definition of the urban population is sometimes ambiguous and unclear. Chan (1994) has argued that the the most accurate definition of China's urban population would be based on those classified as nonagricultural workers, based on their employment and household-registration status. Thus, to count as an urban citizen, one would have to be classified as nonagricultural in employment status and to have been awarded an urban location for household registrationönot an easy thing, especially in the Maoist period. Such a dual definition would reduce the overall level from the current 36%. Yet, as data in table 2 indicate, the 1999 employment definition for the nation's population indicated that only about 50% of China's workers are now classified in the primary sector of the economy. Based on the remaining 50% nonagricultural population, it can be argued that China in fact has underestimated its true urban population. Earlier studies by Ran and Berry (1989) and Chan (1994) have analyzed the manner in which the policies and accounting for the urban population led to what has amounted to an underurbanization according to official data. Although uncertainty has continued over this, and the various changes in the manner in which the country has defined rural versus urban and agricultural versus nonagricultural population, interpretation of urbanization based purely on employment status and the shift from agricultural to nonagricultural activities would suggest that almost half of China's population has already attained urban status.
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Table 2. Employment structure in China, 1985 ^ 99 (% share) (source: NBS, 2000). Economic sector
1985
1990
1999
Primary Secondary Tertiary
62.4 20.9 16.7
60.1 21.4 18.5
50.1 23.0 26.9
Conceptual and theoretical considerations Under socialist transformation (1949 ^ present), China has undergone several stages of economic and related development. These include a progression from a period of restoring production in the early 1950s, through a period of increasing state planning and state controls adopted from the model of Soviet theories and practices of planning and central administrative control. This centralized approach also included episodic cataclysms of mass popular participation, such as the Great Leap Forward (1958 ^ 61) and the Cultural Revolution (1965 ^ 71), movements which were political in part but had far-reaching effects on economic output and growth. After the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, there was a period of reform and economic restructuring in which China adopted a markedly different conceptual and theoretical approach to development. China moved to a partially market-driven approach in which the state, in its economic planning approach, accepted the role of the market in part to allocate according to the principle of comparative advantage related to the factors of production. At the same time, the state began to open its borders to international traders and investors and to accept a more open approach as a mechanism to enhance economic development. This new openness and exposure accelerated economic growth and development, especially in coastal areas. In 1992, the then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping traveled to south China and proclaimed the further loosening of restrictions on foreign investment and personally endorsed the acceleration of economic growth based on market forces and the global market system (Lin, 1999). China's connection to the world economy and trading network continued to advance, and her annual economic growth rates of between 7% and 10% have been among the highest in the world ever since. Associated with this rapid economic growth there has been increasing urbanization which, in part, appears to follow the structural transformation model of economic development associated with the theoretical ideas of Arthur Lewis (1954), John Fei and Gustav Ranis (1964), and Hollis Chenery (1979). This model of development focused on the withdrawal of surplus rural labor from the agricultural sector and its transfer to the modern industrial sector whose growth then absorbs the surplus. The Lewis model has been criticized for inappropriate assumptions on the size of surplus labor pools in rural and urban areas, as well on as the rate of job creation in urban areas and its proportion to capital creation. Capital creation, according to Todaro (2000), is a necessary if not sufficient condition for economic development, and its role has traditionally been linked to growth in output and GNP. Although my discussion here focuses more on the role of labor, capital is also an essential ingredient in the ongoing economic and urban development of China and will be considered in more detail later. Although the specific terms of the Lewis model may not fit, the conceptualization of employment shifts as economic development occurs is useful, and the notion of the use of structural change models to analyze the economic and urban development of contemporary China has validity and value (Chenery and Syrquin, 1975; Todaro, 2000).
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Recent policy and migration indicate that the shift of labor to activities other than agriculture is an essential element of the ongoing processes of economic and urban development underway in China during the last half century and, especially, in the last quarter centuryöthe period of the major economic reforms and restructuring (Chan, 1994; Shen, 2000). For China, as for other densely populated Asian countries, the most significant issue related to the structural shift of the labor force and the transformation away from a predominantly agricultural economy is the absorption of labor into more modern and productive sectors of the economy. Oshima (1987), in his description of the staged sequencing of this process of structural shift in Monsoon Asia and the criticality of it to a successful `agro-industrial transition' and economic advance, has pointedly asserted that it is also essential for the state to maintain conditions of full or nearfull employment to avoid social and political turmoil while maintaining a viable production and employment system for all. Among other conceptual models of economic development that focus on employment shift and which derive from the classical or neoclassical market models of development, perhaps the most appropriate for the purposes of contemporary China and for our analysis is the `price-incentive model' that analyzes the relationship between availability and use of capital and labor. As Todaro (2000) noted, in a populous developing economy the key is to raise not just the productivity of labor (for labor is in great abundance) but also total factor productivity through the use of mechanisms such as appropriate technology and related strategies. These will enable maximum advantage to be taken of the factors that such a country has in abundance and will maximize the use of these in some form of appropriate balance. In this way surplus labor can be appropriately absorbed and well used, even though growth in labor productivity may be slowed. Such strategies, however, do not always appeal to national or local planners and policymakers who wish to see the very latest and most up-to-date technologies and methods used to demonstrate a condition of modernity to the populace. China, with its huge rural labor force, must view the structural shift of the economy and the absorption of the many millions of unemployed or underemployed ruralists as a crucial factor in the coming transition of the country as the economy industrializes, modernizes, and continues to open whilst also urbanizing. The rapid increase in urbanization since the reforms of 1978 ^ 79 coincides remarkably with the fast economic growth and the structural shift in the economy, as China has progressively witnessed a decline in the share of the population in the agricultural sector and a shift of these farmers to other lines of work, such as factory labor, construction, or service and commercial activities, as seen in tables 2 and 3. Such a transformation appears to follow traditional economic patterns from development economies as described in neoclassical models of economic shift (Chenery, 1979; Lewis, 1954; Todaro, 2000). Yet there are some important differences (Lin, 2000). Table 2 clearly shows the transformation of China's economy, as seen in employment shift. Yet, as can be seen in table 3, the agricultural sector and rural economy remain a huge mechanism that continues to absorb around 350 million workers öa kind of employer of last resort for those who cannot find better or more profitable work, as well as an enduring way of life for a large share of China's population. The total agricultural labor force has declined since 1990 from a high of 384 million to 354 million in 1999, and the huge continuing farm employment appears to validate Oshima's (1987) contention of the necessity for maintaining a condition of something near full employment. China is a socialist state in transition that has undertaken to use selected features of a market system to increase the efficiency of the factors of production in its
China's continuing urban transition
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Table 3. China's national and agriculture labor force and sectoral contribution as a share of national population and GDP, 1952 ^ 99 (source: NBS, 2000). Year Populations (millions)
1952 1957 1975 1978 1980 1985 1990 1995 1999
574.82 646.53 924.20 962.59 987.05 1 058.51 1 143.33 1 211.21 1 259.09
National labor forcea (millions)
Agricultural labor forceb (millions)
(%)
207.29 273.11 381.68 401.52 423.61 498.73 639.09 679.47 705.86
173.17 193.09 294.56 283.18 291.22 311.30 384.28 354.68 353.64
83.5 81.4 77.2 70.1 68.7 62.4 60.1 52.2 50.1
Value of output as sectoral share of GDP (%) primary
secondary tertiary
50.5 40.3 32.4 28.1 30.1 28.4 27.1 20.5 17.7
20.9 29.7 45.7 48.2 48.5 43.1 41.6 48.8 49.3
28.6 30.1 21.9 23.7 21.4 28.5 31.3 30.7 33.0
a
National labor force refers to all individuals employed or self-employed in urban or rural areas. b Agricultural labor force is defined as those working in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries.
economy: the land, labor, capital, technology, and the special entrepreneurial talent and skill of its people. At the same time it has determined to keep strict political control, in keeping with the continued primacy of the Chinese Communist Party as the controlling and sole political power. In this way the role of the central state remains paramount, and the recent declarations of many analysts that the forces of globalization are replacing the nation-state appear premature and not entirely appropriate in any description of China (Dicken, 1998; Sassen, 1994; 1996; H W C Yeung, 1998). China's history, culture, and recent expressions of outright nationalism suggest other forces at work, which argue for China being a special and distinctive national case of modernization and development. The combination of the continuing role of the central state and the emergence of localism and local forces have created idiosyncratic conditions peculiar to China that argue for its recognition as a special case of economic and urban development (Lin, 2000; 2001; Oi, 1995; Solinger, 1999). The longterm fascination, almost obsession, of Western capitalists with enriching themselves from the huge, yet challenging and sometimes mysterious, Chinese market remains an unfulfilled dream (Studwell, 2002). Even China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) is no guarantee that its markets will live up to the expectations of Western and other businessmen. The fact that China accounts for 21% of the total human experience also reminds us forcefully of its significance to our understanding of development and urban processes generally. The particular trajectory of China's urbanization may also help illumine these broader issues and questions of national development. Forces driving China's urban transition In trying to understand the conditions and determinants of the urban transition in China, it is thus necessary to take into account the salient influence of state policy and regulations which affect various aspects of the economy, society, and the cities and towns, to understand fully how this transition has come about and where it is going. China's urban transition must be seen as evolving in parallel with the transition of the socialist economyöa gradual process from a planned command economy to a market economy, which also involves powerful and extensive inputs from officials at the local and regional, as well as the national, level (Wank, 1999).
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While exploring the salient forces in this remarkable and accelerating urban transition, I seek to link the economic and social changes to spatial processes that are related and evolving in parallel with the processes of urban change. What are the salient forces that help explain the processes of China's urban transition? A number come to mind, and I focus on those I believe to be most significant. First, and most basic, are the population and demographic processes that operate in the current context of China's enormous and growing population. Second is the related issue of the movement of these people and their migration patterns, especially those from rural to urban areas as well as from interior to coastal regions. Third, a shift in the employment structure of the nation's workforce, as the economy needs more workers in activities such as manufacturing, construction, and servicesöactivities other than agriculture. Fourth, the use of trade, and especially exports, coupled with the movement of foreign capital into China as a means to finance economic growth and development, especially associated with the global trading network. Related to growing trade and foreign investment is the restructuring of the industrial and state economy. This in turn should stimulate growth in domestic demand to offset the reorganization and closure of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and to allow new and productive means of absorbing the labor surplus from restructured or closed enterprises as well as those coming in from the countryside. Fifth, to identify the investments in fixed assets, the funds to finance and build adequate housing, urban transport systems, and other infrastructure for the several hundred million new citizens who will be entering China's future cities and to provide thoughtful, innovative, and productive designs for urban structure and land use. This process will also involve advanced sectors of the economy such as hightech zones and incubators as well as funding for the most advanced science and engineering sectors. Although they are not addressed specifically in this study, the related management and funding to support improvement of the urban environmentöincluding the cost of pollution abatement and clean upöin order to provide an urban environment that is sustainable and productive over the long term will be an important component of the future cost of the infrastructure. These five, I argue, are the salient forces and factors that are driving China's continuing urban transition. The population supply and growth Consider first population and its recent growth and change. China's 2000 Census disclosed that China continues to have the world's largest populationö1.265 billion people. Despite a marked decline in birth and fertility rates over the last twenty-five years, as seen in table 1, China continues to add 10 ^ 11 million people to its population per annum, owing to its huge population baseöeven with reduced birth (
