Four Major Problems in China's Urbanization: NDRC Points to Extensive Land Use

The State Council Information Office held a press briefing on the afternoon of March 29, at which officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Ministry of Agriculture introduced relevant information on China's urbanization development and answered questions from reporters.

At the briefing, Li Shouxin, director of the Development Planning Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that due to various historical, institutional and development-stage reasons, China's urbanization has also given rise to a number of problems.

First, judging from the composition of the population, the quality of China's urbanized population is still not high. Of the 622 million urban residents, those counted in the urban population but who in fact still hold agricultural household registration, mainly migrant workers, number about 167 million. They in fact work and live in cities, but they do not enjoy the same social rights and interests as urban residents. Their production and living conditions remain highly unstable. This is a prominent problem.

Second, judging from the spatial distribution, the level of urbanization development in China's eastern, central and western regions is also very uneven. What stands out is that the level of urbanization in the central region is still noticeably low, and its urbanization development lags relatively far behind. To a certain extent, this has also widened the development gap between regions. The problem that the spatial layout of cities and towns is incompatible with the carrying capacity of resources and the environment is now becoming ever more prominent. Of the 655 cities, nearly 400 now suffer from water shortages, and about 200 of them face severe water shortages. In addition, as everyone knows, the South-to-North Water Diversion and the West-to-East Gas Transmission projects we are now carrying out are in fact aimed at the current situation in which cities' economies, populations, resources and environment are incompatible and mismatched, involving large-scale, long-distance transfers of energy and resources; these projects are a last resort.

Third, judging from the form of urbanization, development at different scales and levels is uncoordinated. In most urban agglomerations - as I just mentioned, the three major urban agglomerations of the Bohai Rim, the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta have relatively strong economic strength - but speaking of the country as a whole, most cities are still in the initial stage of urbanization development. In particular, small and medium-sized cities still have insufficient capacity to absorb population, and still have great potential. As for small towns, in the past they sprang up everywhere, occupying too much of the very precious land resources, and the blind development of small towns has also caused environmental pollution. These problems are also quite prominent.

Fourth, judging from factor inputs, China's excessive reliance on land-supported urbanization means its sustainability is not strong, or rather it is already unsustainable. Driven by the profit motive of generating wealth from land, some localities have led some cities to blindly expand their building frameworks and construct large plazas and wide avenues, while in fact land use is extremely extensive. To sum it up in one sentence: the urbanization of land is faster than the urbanization of people - that is where this concept comes from. From 1999 to 2007, the area of built-up urban districts expanded by 7.2%, but the population absorbed grew by only 4%.