ABSTRACT
Emerging urban poverty problems were discussed in the last chapter. This chapter and the two following will look at the urban poor in detail using data collected in poor areas in Shenyang and Chongqing in 2000 and 2001. Shenyang is the political, economic and cultural centre of Liaoning province in the north-east of China. Its central urban districts cover an area of 3,495 km2 with a built-up area about 230 km2 in 1999. The total population in the central urban districts was 4.8 million, of which 3.9 million were official nonagricultural urban residents (Shenyang Statistics Bureau, 2000). Chongqing, situated on the Yangtze River in the Sichuan basin, is the major political, economic and cultural centre in south-west China. The new Chongqing Municipality (one of the only four cities directly controlled by the central government) was designated in 1997. It includes the city of Chongqing itself, four other small cities and 23 rural counties. The total area controlled by the municipal government is quite large (82,403 km2) and the central built-up area was about 175 km2 in 1996 (Chongqing Master Planning Office and Chongqing Urban Planning and
Design Institute, 1998). The population in the central urban districts was 8.36 million in 1998, of which 3.5 million were official urban residents (State Statistics Bureau, 2000). Both cities were important regional and national industrial bases during the planned economy period. Industry concentrated in the traditional sectors of manufacturing, engineering, chemicals, steel and textiles. Recent industrial restructuring policies had a dramatic impact on these old industrial establishments many of them became loss-making and a large proportion of workers were laid-off. Official statistics show that between 1996 and 1999 the number of persons employed by the state and the collective sectors had declined by 17 and 42 per cent respectively in Shenyang and 13 and 29 per cent in Chongqing (Shenyang Statistics Bureau, 2000; and Chongqing Statistics Bureau, 2000).
