ABSTRACT
The analysis of the preceding chapters suggests that there is a need to evaluate critically the manner in which the urbanization process in China is being represented. One of the important facets of this deconstruction involves analyzing the spatial consequences of the accelerated growth of urbanization. At present urbanization is being monitored largely through the lens of “official” definitions of urban. This emphasis begins with a national state development project that accepts the inevitability of the growth of urban places as central to the task of making China into a modern state. Cities are seen as the “institutional engines” that facilitate increases in productivity and national and international competitiveness. Cities are also important because they are huge “consumption islands” that will play a crucial role in the development of the national consumption market. In order to accomplish this task cities will have to be made more efficient “distribution nodes” in the national and international transportation systems. Thus the internationalization of cities becomes an
important part of urbanization policy improving the infrastructure for business and tourism. To facilitate this policy cities have to be made more livable with improved public facilities and environments. This means that the main emphasis on monitoring the urbanization process at the state level is in generating data that will enable the role of the city to be evaluated in terms of its contribution to national development. But urban activity is not confined to these “monitored units” of political urban space. Urban activities are spreading out from the urban areas and developing within non-urban areas in “extended urban regions” that include both units of “urban political space” and “rural space.” While the state is well aware of these processes and has been engaged in an ongoing administrative reclassification of “rural” to “urban” it is not able to keep pace with this urban spread. Therefore there is an “unofficial urbanization” occurring in China as well as an official one. In this chapter we have focused on the spatial aspects of urbanization through these two facets of “official urbanization” and “unofficial urbanization.” In the first part of the chapter we look at the “official” patterns of urbanization at the national, regional and city levels. In the second part we look at the “unofficial” urbanization that is illustrated through the growth of “extended metropolitan regions.”
