THE DEVELOPMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS AND STRATEGIC IDEAS OF URBANIZATION IN CHINA

Key words: 
• Chinese urbanization /
• dual urbanization strategy /
• network pattern of urbanization /
• "strongpoint" pattern of urbanization

Abstract: Since cities and towns are places where those nonagricultural industries are centralized, urbanization is greatly interrelated with industrialization and de-agriculturalization. By means of this kind of interrelationship, Chinese urbanization level may be estimated with the formulas: P₁=I₁/I₀/u₀, P_r = N₁/N₀/u₀. The urbanization after the founding of the People's Republic of China can be divided into the following 5 stages: the stage at the out set of industrialization (1949-1957); the high-speed urbanization stage (1958-1960); the first counter-urbanization stage (1961-1965); the second counter-urbanization stage (1966-1976); and the high-speed urbanization stage (1978-now). The characteristics of Chinese urbanization are: the industrialization launched by the government; the simultaneous development of urbanization of cities and urbanization of rural areas; the quite low capability of urbanization to absorb nonagricultural labor force; the incoordinate development of cities, etc. Before establishing a specific way of urbanization, it is necessary to determine some strategical principles of the future urbanization, for example, the principle of giving consideration to both economic results and social results, the principle of the combination of strongpoints, the principle of employing both governmental and nongovernmental launching mechanisms, the principle of combining intensive urbanization and extensive urbanization, the principle of paying equal attenion to both urban urbanization and rural urbanization, the principle of combining concentration and dispersion, etc. With the dual urbanizaticn in China and the arduous shifting task of rural surplus labor, the dual urbanization strategy of urbanizing both urban and rural areas should be carried on.