ABSTRACT
The message of this book is straightforward. China, the world’s largest country in terms of population with 21 percent of the world’s population in 20012 is firmly embarked upon a development trajectory that will lead to an urbanized society. While rural life will remain important in China it will be the urban spaces of China that are, and will remain, the locus of most of the significant social and economic change that will occur in the country. It will also be the urban spaces that are the focus of most of the major political, environmental and social challenges of China’s future.3 One purpose of this study has been to show the difficulties of analyzing the demographic, social, economic and political dimensions of this urban transition. In a similar manner to every state in the global system the “facts” of urbanization are “cultural constructs” that have to be given “meaning” by researchers from within and outside the country who are familiar with the political economy of the state in which these “facts” are collected. For example, the very commendable efforts of the United Nations Population Division’s biannual charting of the statistical dimensions of global urbanization, record that in 2001 42.5 percent of China’s population were “urban.” However, if the proportion of population recorded as engaged in “non-agricultural” occupations was utilized to indicate the urban proportion it would be of a much lower order of 33 percent. The 2000 Chinese census figure for the urban population of China was 36.9 percent.
