An Analysis of Differential Urbanization in China 1982-2000

Principal Investigator:
Shen, Jianfa

Co-investigator(s):
---

Summary:
There is still much confusion about the size of the urban population in China although it is one of the crucial indicators for assessing China's development and modernization. The difficulties in counting China's urban population arise from the accelerated urbanization in China under a model of dual track urbanization since the early 1980s. A large surplus rural labor force has been employed in TVEs and many rural migrants have moved into urban areas as "temporary population". It remains a conceptual and technical challenge to count such quasi-urban population as urban population due to a peculiar household registration system (hukou) in the country. Other than the urban population data in census years, there are no reliable urban population data for inter-census years especially at regional level. This is a serious problem for the study of Chinese urbanization.The objective of this project is to assess the comparability of urban population definitions in three recent censuses in 1982, 1990 and 2000. The national and regional urban population data will be adjusted and estimated according to the concept of dual track urbanization. The urban non-agricultural and agricultural populations will be counted and estimated separately. It is expected that a set of national and regional urban population data for 1982-2000 would be obtained after a series of adjustment and estimation. The differential urbanization in various provincial regions would then be analyzed. The findings of this project would shed light on the processes of urbanization and regional development that is still unfolding in transitional China.