The Deep-Seated Reasons Why Urbanization Should Not Continue to Be Accelerated
Original editor's note: After a gap of 37 years, the Central Urban Work Conference was convened again, marking a new stage in China's urban development, and "urbanization" has become a focus of public attention. At present, China's urbanization rate of permanent residents is already close to 55%, which means that China's urban development is in a stage of rapid growth. Recently, the China Urban Planning Network interviewed Professor Zhou Yixing, advisor to the Urban Planning Society of China, on issues concerning urbanization development. Professor Zhou has long been engaged in academic research in the field of urbanization, and on September 29, 2005, at the twenty-fifth collective study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, he was invited to explain "foreign urbanization development models and the urbanization path with Chinese characteristics."
The common understanding: urbanization is a "process"
Reporter: In recent years, the central government has attached great importance to work related to urbanization, and China's urbanization is at a critical period of in-depth development. What do you think is the essential meaning of urbanization?
Zhou Yixing: The essential meaning of urbanization is that after humanity entered industrial society, socio-economic development began a process in which the proportion of agricultural activity gradually declined and the proportion of non-agricultural activity gradually rose; corresponding to changes in the economic structure, there emerged a process in which the proportion of rural population gradually decreased and the proportion of urban population steadily rose; and a process in which the physical appearance of settlements and people's way of life gradually transformed into or were strengthened toward urban characteristics. Although different disciplines place different emphases on understanding this complex phenomenon, it is the common understanding that urbanization is a "process."
Reporter: Can this process be understood as migrant workers moving into cities?
Zhou Yixing: In the process of urbanization, the proportion of urban population rises, and rural population is transformed into urban population. But this transformation takes two forms: transformation through migration and transformation in place. The basic driving force of transformation through migration is the existence of the urban-rural income gap, which causes population to flow from rural areas into cities and towns; the mechanism of transformation in place is the urban transformation and integration of the original countryside through new rural construction, small town construction, and urban development.
Urbanization is a process of dual change at the physical level and the spiritual level
Reporter: At present, many people believe that urbanization means urban expansion or new district construction. What is your view on this?
Zhou Yixing: Do not simply understand the issue of urbanization as a problem of urban development or urban construction. It is first of all a problem of economic structural adjustment and transformation of the economic growth pattern, and also a problem of resolving issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, building small towns, and building a new countryside, and a problem of resolving the urban-rural dual system and narrowing the urban-rural gap. It includes both the visible process of physical change and the relatively abstract process of change at the spiritual level, such as culture, lifestyle, and values.
The process of urbanization follows patterns, but these cannot be absolutized
Reporter: The core of urbanization is the urbanization of people. Then does the process you just mentioned, the rise in the proportion of urban population, follow any patterns?
Zhou Yixing: Yes. The American scholar Kingsley Davis proposed in 1972: "The urbanization process of a country or region generally follows a logistic curve." In 1975, Ray M. Northam first drew the logistic curve of urbanization and divided it into three stages: the initial stage, the middle acceleration stage, and the late stage, which is what we often call the S-shaped curve of the urbanization process.
Of course, this curve is only illustrative. In 1982, when I first introduced the S-shaped curve of urbanization into China, I made slight modifications to adapt it to general circumstances.
However, in reality there are two misunderstandings: first, treating 30% and 70% as the turning points of the three stages and absolutizing them. It seems that once the urbanization level reaches 30%, it will automatically accelerate, and once it reaches 70%, it will automatically slow down. In fact, there are no stipulated characteristic points, and the development stage of urbanization still has to be judged from the actual changes in mechanisms and processes. Second, arbitrarily applying the S-shaped curve, which describes macro conditions, to very small regional spaces, even to city or county areas. For an urban region that has basically already achieved urbanization, a rise of a few percentage points in the proportion of urban population is no longer of great importance. To raise the level of urbanization, more attention should be paid to the quality of urbanization, and it should be measured by various indicators of urban modernization.
The process of urbanization is constrained by the pull of cities and towns and the push of rural areas
Reporter: Could you explain the S-shaped curve of urbanization in more detail?
Zhou Yixing: As for the "three-stage theory" of the S-shaped curve of urbanization, in earlier years I explained it using the "push-pull theory."
The process of population transfer from rural areas to cities and towns is controlled by two basic forces: first, the pull of cities and towns, and second, the push of rural areas. Because industrial construction and the corresponding development of the tertiary industry require labor, cities and towns exert an attraction on rural labor. The advantages of cities in material and spiritual aspects such as employment, income, cultural life, and social status also create a strong temptation for rural population. This refers to the pull of cities and towns. The push of rural areas comes from the fact that the growth of rural population causes the absolute amount of arable land available per capita to decline. With the progress of agricultural science and technology, especially agricultural machinery and the socialization of agricultural services, agricultural labor productivity has increased, creating a surplus of agricultural labor that needs to find a way out in the non-agricultural sectors of cities. The size of the pull and the push depends on the population growth rates of urban and rural areas, the scale of investment used to expand reproduction, the speed of economic growth, and the level of scientific and technological development. The mutual waxing and waning of the pull and the push causes the urbanization process to exhibit stages.
In the initial stage, generally because the contradiction between people and land is not yet acute, funds are short, and the level of technology is backward, both the pull of cities and the push of rural areas are released slowly. Therefore, a relatively long period is needed before the urban population rises from a few percent or slightly more than ten percent to slightly more than twenty or thirty percent. As the foundation of industrialization is gradually established, the country's economic strength grows markedly, the scale and speed of various types of construction clearly exceed those of the previous stage, and agricultural labor productivity is also greatly improved. At this time, both the pull of cities and the push of rural areas increase simultaneously, and the middle stage of rapid urbanization development begins. It may be possible, within a relatively short period, for the urbanization level to rise quickly from the original twenty or thirty percent to break through fifty percent and reach sixty or seventy percent. After the rural population has undergone both a relative decline and an absolute decline, the actual scale of agricultural labor is already not large. In order to maintain the scale of agricultural production necessary for society, the rural surplus labor force tends to decrease and needs to be kept relatively stable at a certain proportion, and the push of rural areas gradually weakens and may even basically disappear.
On the urban side, because of improvements in science and technology and in management, the development of social production no longer mainly relies on an increase in living labor, but on an increase in materialized labor. A large amount of labor remaining from urban industry is correspondingly adjusted within the cities and moves toward the tertiary industry, and the pull of cities also gradually weakens. The proportion of urban population inevitably enters a period of slow growth or even relative stagnation.
Urbanization cannot remain in a state of acceleration all the time
Reporter: Do you think China's urbanization will continue to accelerate in the future?
Zhou Yixing: In 2005, my student and colleague Dr. Chen Yanguang revised and improved the Northam curve. He obtained a four-stage model roughly corresponding to Northam's three-stage model: namely the initial stage, the middle acceleration stage, the middle deceleration stage, and the late stage.
If applied specifically to a country or region, this can be converted into the following statements: (1) what was previously called the middle stage of urbanization actually includes two smaller stages, middle acceleration and middle deceleration; (2) when the urbanization level reaches half of the saturation value, the speed of urbanization is the fastest, and after that, under normal circumstances, it will decelerate; (3) knowing the urbanization level at which the speed of urbanization is the fastest allows one to roughly infer the saturation value of urbanization.
Raising the level of urbanization should eliminate the trend of thought of a "new Great Leap Forward"
Reporter: Can China's current and future urbanization gain some inspiration from the above theoretical analysis?
Zhou Yixing: I judge that in the mid-1980s, when China's urbanization level reached around 25%, it entered the middle stage. After that, the speed gradually increased. For a period after 2000, when China's urbanization speed was growing by 1.3 to 1.4 percentage points a year, it had already reached its highest speed. At that time, China's corresponding urbanization level was roughly around 40%. According to the communique of the sixth national population census in 2010, the population residing in cities and towns in mainland China was 665.57 million, already accounting for 49.68% of the total population.
If my judgment is not wrong, China's future urbanization speed will only tend to decelerate while remaining on a fast track, and will no longer tend to accelerate.
The strategic focus should shift to "paying attention to the quality of urbanization"
Reporter: If urbanization enters a deceleration stage, what do you think should be the focus of urbanization work in the next stage?
Zhou Yixing: I believe that today, when China's urbanization level exceeds 50%, while urbanization continues to be a key national development strategy, the strategic focus should shift to "paying attention to the quality of urbanization." We must firmly establish the idea that the higher the urbanization level, the better is not necessarily true, and the faster the urbanization speed, the better is not necessarily true. A high level and high speed of urbanization are a double-edged sword: they have favorable aspects, but they will also bring many problems that cannot be solved.
To improve the quality of China's urbanization, we can start from both urban and rural aspects:
In cities, the key is to solve the settlement problem of migrant workers from elsewhere. Efforts should be made to lower the threshold for farmers entering cities to settle there, so that they can have warm nuclear families in the cities, also enjoy public services such as urban medical care and children's education, fully integrate into mainstream urban society, and become citizens in the true sense. In this way, the humanistic spirit of socialist fairness can be embodied.
In rural areas, taking advantage of the favorable situation in which the rural population has already been declining in absolute terms under the great tide of urbanization, we should carry out in-depth development of modern agriculture (if there can be a new type of industrialization, can there not be a new type of agriculturalization?), cultivate a market system for agricultural industrialization, and enable farmers to become prosperous as quickly as possible. We should increase investment in rural infrastructure and public facilities, vigorously develop rural education, build a new socialist countryside, and develop small towns in a focused way. We should gradually narrow the gap between urban and rural areas in income level, knowledge level, and level of civilization, so that rural residents can likewise enjoy the pleasures of the era of urbanization.