Lu Ming, Professor, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
A version of this article was originally published in the Business Standard as ‘Towards sustainable urbanisation in China’, 6 May 2017. This is part of a series by Chinese economists facilitated by the ICS.
China has received enormous dividends from its decades of urbanization, which provided labour resources for the development of its industrial and service sectors and rapidly raised the income of the Chinese people. A large number of Chinese farmers became part of the country’s modernization process, allowing for poverty alleviation in rural areas. At the end of 2016, the urbanization rate of China stood at around 57%
China however, continues to face serious impediments in the urbanization process.
One of these is China’s household registration system or the hukou, which connects a person’s right to access public services with whether or not he has a resident status in a locality. The reality is that some one-third of city dwellers in China are trans-regional immigrants who actually do not possess local household registration. As a result, they do not enjoy the same level of social security and public services as local urban residents.
This is a particularly serious social problem for China. Continue reading “Key Issues in Urbanization in China”