China Will Move 250M From Country to City by 2025

Ray

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How China Will Move 250M From Country to City in 12 Years

WILL MASS URBANIZATION CREATE GROWTH OR JUST DESTROY RURAL LIFE?

(NEWSER) – In the 1980s, 20% of people in China lived in the city. Today, it's 53%. By 2025, the country's leaders wants 70% of the population to be city-dwellers—about 900 million people. How do you do that? Bulldoze the villages and build new cities from scratch, reports the New York Times. Farmers sell their land to corporations and municipalities, and move into big apartment towers rent-free—a change that's exciting for some, and worrying for others, as the newly built towns don't necessarily offer many opportunities for employment. And many farmers say they are not actually given a choice in surrendering their land.

Theoretically, more urbanites means more consumers and tax-payers and thus greater growth. But the move is still a risky one. It will cost China an estimated $600 billion a year, as it builds new infrastructure and pays for education, health care, and pensions for the former farmers. And while the urbanization is already well underway, the government has still not finalized its actual blueprint for the plan. If the strategy fails, there are fears the new urbanites will just become a new urban underclass. "There's this feeling that we have to modernize, we have to urbanize and this is our national-development strategy," says a rural development expert. "It's almost like another Great Leap Forward."

How China Will Move 250M From Country to City in 12 Years - Will mass urbanization create growth or just destroy rural life?

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a very interesting proposal and quite a challenge.

Being an autocratic Govt, it is possible.

However, as it is, China's food requirement is quite high and they are lease foreign lands to grow crops.

Will this not affect farmlands and food grain requirements?

Is it a recipe for huge problems later on or is it a visionary move?
 

Ray

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Urban world: Mapping the economic power of cities

The urban world is shifting. Today only 600 urban centers generate about 60 percent of global GDP. While 600 cities will continue to account for the same share of global GDP in 2025, this group of 600 will have a very different membership. Over the next 15 years, the center of gravity of the urban world will move south and, even more decisively, east.

Until now, a company strategy focused on developed economies together with emerging-market megacities (with populations of ten million or more) has made sense—this combination generates more than 70 percent of global GDP today. But these regions and very large cities in developing economies are likely to generate only an estimated one-third of global growth to 2025. A strategy focused on this combination will be insufficient for companies seeking growth.

It is a common misperception that megacities have been driving global growth for the past 15 years. In fact, most have not grown faster than their host economies, and MGI expects this trend to continue. Today's 23 megacities—with populations of 10 million or more—will contribute about 10 percent of global growth to 2025, below their 14 percent share of global GDP.

In contrast, 577 middleweights—cities with populations of between 150,000 and 10 million, are seen contributing more than half of global growth to 2025, gaining share from today's megacities. By 2025, 13 middleweights are likely to be have become megacities, 12 of which are in emerging-markets (the exception is Chicago) and seven in China alone.

Emerging-market mega—and middleweight cities together—423 of them are included in the City 600—are likely to contribute more than 45 percent of global growth from 2007 to 2025. Across the world, MGI identifies 407 emerging middleweight cities contributing nearly 40 percent of global growth, more than the entire developed world and emerging-markets megacities combined.

By 2025, developing-region cities of the City 600 will be home to an estimated 235 million middle-class households earning more than $20,000 a year at purchasing power parity (PPP). This compares with more than 210 million such households expected in the cities of developed regions. So even at the higher end of the middle-class segment, there will be more households in emerging-market cities than in developed ones.

MGI finds that population in the City 600 will grow an estimated 1.6 times faster than the population of the world as a whole. By 2025, the City 600 will be home to an estimated 310 million more people of working age—and account for almost 35 percent of the expansion of the potential global workforce. Almost all of this increase is likely to be in the cities of emerging-markets—and two-thirds in the leading cities of China and India.

By 2025, there are likely to be about 13 million more children aged up to 15 in these 600 cities than there were in 2007 but with very different trends across regions. An estimated seven million additional children will be in the City 600's Chinese cities compared with 2007, despite the fact that the number of children in China overall is declining, and MGI sees cities in the United States and Canada being home to three million more children in 2025 than in 2007. By combining demographic and income distribution data, MGI estimates that the number of children in households with an annual household income above $20,000 is likely to grow more than 10 times as fast in the cities of developing-regions as those in developed economies. The research also shows that aging in cities is not just a developed-country phenomenon. The top 216 cities in China will have 80 million new older citizens and Shanghai is expected to be home to twice as many older people as New York.

Around the world, the size of households is declining and leading to an increase in the number of households. MGI expects the number of households in the world's leading cities to grow at 2.3 times the rate of global population. The City 600 alone is likely to see the formation of 250 million new households. An estimated 85 percent of these households will form in the cities of emerging regions; half of the total will be in China's cities alone. Globally, the three cities that will experience the strongest growth in housing demand will be Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

The economic role of large cities varies widely among regions today—as do their future growth patterns. China's rapid growth is fueled by the continued growth of its megacities and the emergence of new ones. India's urbanization is at a relatively early stage, while Latin America's largest cities are giving way to fast-expanding middleweights. It is clear that there is no "one size fits all" approach to tapping into the urban markets of emerging economies.

Choosing the right urban markets requires combining granular market intelligence with company-specific information on the potential of different urban geographies and the cost of reaching them. A strategy based on clusters of cities is an attractive option for many companies, particularly in large countries like China and India that have significant regional differences in their market characteristics.

Urban world: Mapping the economic power of cities | McKinsey & Company
 

Ray

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China embarking on vast programme of urbanization: Moving 250m into cities

BEIJING: China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.


The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.

This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers.

The shift is occurring so quickly, and the potential costs are so high, that some fear rural China is once again the site of radical social engineering. Over the past decades, the Communist Party has flip-flopped on peasants' rights to use land: giving small plots to farm during 1950s land reform, collectivizing a few years later, restoring rights at the start of the reform era and now trying to obliterate small landholders.

Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services, but often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of the countryside.

"It's a new world for us in the city," said Tian Wei, 43, a former wheat farmer in the northern province of Hebei, who now works as a night watchman at a factory. "All my life I've worked with my hands in the fields; do I have the educational level to keep up with the city people?"

China has long been home to both some of the world's tiniest villages and its most congested, polluted examples of urban sprawl. The ultimate goal of the government's modernization plan is to fully integrate 70 percent of the country's population, or roughly 900 million people, into city living by 2025. Currently, only half that number are.

The building frenzy is on display in places like Liaocheng, which grew up as an entrepot for local wheat farmers in the North China Plain. It is now ringed by scores of 20-story towers housing now-landless farmers who have been thrust into city life. Many are giddy at their new lives — they received the apartments free, plus tens of thousands of dollars for their land — but others are uncertain about what they will do when the money runs out.

Aggressive state spending is planned on new roads, hospitals, schools, community centers — which could cost upward of $600 billion a year, according to economists' estimates. In addition, vast sums will be needed to pay for the education, health care and pensions of the ex-farmers.

While the economic fortunes of many have improved in the mass move to cities, unemployment and other social woes have also followed the enormous dislocation. Some young people feel lucky to have jobs that pay survival wages of about $150 a month; others wile away their days in pool halls and video-game arcades.

Top-down efforts to quickly transform entire societies have often come to grief, and urbanization has already proven one of the most wrenching changes in China's 35 years of economic transition. Land disputes account for thousands of protests each year, including dozens of cases in recent years in which people have set themselves aflame rather than relocate.

China embarking on vast programme of urbanization: Moving 250m into cities - The Times of India
 

Ray

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/w...ooting-moving-250-million-into-cities.html?hp Hit the link for the full article and accompanying slideshows. Some excerpts:

China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.
The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.

Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services, but often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of the countryside.

China has long been home to both some of the world's tiniest villages and its most congested, polluted examples of urban sprawl. The ultimate goal of the government's modernization plan is to fully integrate 70 percent of the country's population, or roughly 900 million people, into city living by 2025. Currently, only half that number are.

Top-down efforts to quickly transform entire societies have often come to grief, and urbanization has already proven one of the most wrenching changes in China's 35 years of economic transition. Land disputes account for thousands of protests each year, including dozens of cases in recent years in which people have set themselves aflame rather than relocate.

Some of these problems could include chronic urban unemployment if jobs are not available, and more protests from skeptical farmers unwilling to move. Instead of creating wealth, urbanization could result in a permanent underclass in big Chinese cities and the destruction of a rural culture and religion.

On the ground, however, the new wave of urbanization is well under way. Almost every province has large-scale programs to move farmers into housing towers, with the farmers' plots then given to corporations or municipalities to manage. Efforts have been made to improve the attractiveness of urban life, but the farmers caught up in the programs typically have no choice but to leave their land.

The primary motivation for the urbanization push is to change China's economic structure, with growth based on domestic demand for products instead of relying so much on export. In theory, new urbanites mean vast new opportunities for construction companies, public transportation, utilities and appliance makers, and a break from the cycle of farmers consuming only what they produce. "If half of China's population starts consuming, growth is inevitable," said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. "Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume."

Farmers are often unwilling to leave the land because of the lack of job opportunities in the new towns. Working in a factory is sometimes an option, but most jobs are far from the newly built towns. And even if farmers do get jobs in factories, most lose them when they hit age 45 or 50, since employers generally want younger, nimbler workers.

This has been tried experimentally, with mixed results. Outside the city of Chengdu, some farmers said they received nothing when their land was taken to build a road, leading to daily confrontations with construction crews and the police since the beginning of this year.

But south of Chengdu in Shuangliu County, farmers who gave up their land for an experimental strawberry farm run by a county-owned company said they receive an annual payment equivalent to the price of 2,000 pounds of grain plus the chance to earn about $8 a day working on the new plantation.
It's failed everywhere else in the world, so why not do it in China?

One thing that occurs to me – aside from everything else, herding people together into shitbox highrises will make them easier to keep track of and control.

The Nightmare of Modern China | Hongkie Town
 

Armand2REP

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It will just destroy rural life. What China considers rural in most cases is actually urban in most other countries. 250m is really all the true rural China has left. The growth model based on urbanization sputtered out during the financial crisis. Find a new model, stealing land so you can resell it is just theft of your own people.
 

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