Chinese migrant population left semi-urbanized
- Source: Global Times
- [01:54 September 25 2010]
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By Wu Meng
The complexity and diversity of Chinese cities make it difficult to define the stage of China's urbanization process.
The growing number of billionaires and skyscrapers make big cities like Beijing and Shanghai just as modern as New York and London, but the even bigger number of migrant workers is a pressing concern in the mega-cities.
"China Development Report 2010: Promoting the human development strategy of China's new cities," a report released Tuesday by the China Development Research Foundation under the State Council stated that urbanization in China is still in a "semi-urbanized" stage, with about 20 years left in this phase.
The key to speeding up this process is to urbanize the migrant workers in big cities. The unbalanced development of big cities and other areas in China, shows that the country still has a long way to go until the population is truly urbanized.
Over the last decade, urbanization has been the main theme in most cities in China.
According to the report, in the last 30 years since the reform and opening-up, the urban population has been increasing at an average speed of 0.9 percent annually, with a current urbanization rate of 46.6 percent across China on a proportional population scale.
But does this figure really represent the true development stage of China's urbanization?
The current statistics included over 145 million migrant workers who have been living in cities for over 6 months but do not enjoy the same welfare system and political rights as recognized urban residents, as well as 140 million people who are still registered under a rural hukou but work as farmers in the cities. In this sense, the current urbanization figure is questionable and leaves much room for future development.
In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, the growth of outsiders has outpaced the locals who enjoy all the local citizen rights and welfare policies.
Adapting the current policies and reforming them to better cover this group of people is the key to further urbanization in China.
At the moment, China's urbanization is in a bottleneck. It is a situation that most Western countries have never encountered considering China's huge population and heavy social welfare burden.
China's drive to urbanize will truly mature once more channels become open to migrant workers to blend into the nation's growing cities.
