ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the significant shift in the debate and policies, and speculate on what the future may hold for China's urbanisation policy. In so far as the politics of the Cultural Revolution had offered a model for China's urbanisation, it was that of the Daqing oilfield. The eschewing of the Maoist prescriptions for China's urbanisation left a vacuum which it was the task of the resuscitated urban planning organisations of the late 1970s to fill. In the strategic urbanisation formula put forward at the 1980 city planning conference, China's 'medium-sized' cities were singled out for 'rational development'. The reasoned hostility towards a small-town-based strategy reviewed is an important element in the continuing discussion regarding China's path to urbanisation. The prospects for development of the small-town economy do seem bright, however, where it gains its essential protection through integration with, and subordination to, the modern– sector enterprises of the cities.
