Introduction

Since the late 1970s, China has experienced an unprecedented pace of urbanization. In 1978, only 17.8 percent of the population resided in urban areas; by 2013 this reached 53.8 percent. During the same period, the number of cities has increased more than three times, from 193 to 658. Such an impressive pace of urbanization is equally matched by the rapid development of residential and commercial buildings in urban China today, as well as state-of-the-art infrastructure projects including transformative expansion of highways and high-speed railroads across China. By 2012, China had become the second largest economy in the world, just behind the United States. Though being disputed by the Chinese government, the World Bank had already ranked China as the largest economy in the world by 2014, measured by purchasing power. Despite China’s highly acclaimed achievements in urbanization and the economic miracle, urban China faces a set of significant challenges. Some of the key challenging issues include the integration of more than 200 million migrants to cities, urban housing and health issues, and uneven development in urbanization between western and the coastal regions. China’s fifth-generation leaders, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, have strongly endorsed the development of policies to address these issues. The Chinese Community Party’s (CCP) 18th Central Committee convened its Third Plenum in November 2013. The key document from the Third Plenum reveals the CCP’s strong commitment to further urbanization. In particular, there is a strong consensus on the “people centered” approach to urbanization, namely ensuring employment and basic benefits and well-being of new urban citizen-migrants. In light of the recent slowdown of the Chinese economy, the same document also sees urbanization as an engine of future economic growth in China. The argument is that giving full-fledged benefits to migrants will stimulate further consumption demand, which ultimately helps the process of transformation from an export-driven economy to a consumptiondriven economy in China. The 2013 document from the CCP’s Third Plenum of the 18th Congress was followed by another, more comprehensive urbanization document, “A Blueprint for China’s New Urbanization: 2014-2020,” issued in March 2014. This is perhaps the most comprehensive and ambitious urbanization plan that has ever been produced. The plan calls for giving urban hukou status to 100 million migrants by 2020. The blueprint addresses many issues related to urbanization,

from education of migrant children to social welfare protection and housing, from detailed policies of converting the agricultural population to urban residents, to the improvement of the urban health care system. Fortunately, our book project comes at this propitious historical moment to address some of the most important issues related to urbanization in China. This book project has been initiated under the leadership of the Urban China Research Network (UCRN) with major support from the Lingnan Foundation. The overarching objectives of UCRN have been to train the next generation of urban China researchers and build bridges for collaborative projects between scholars in China and the United States. This reflects our deep conviction that the field needs a new generation of well-trained urban scholars to explore and tackle questions during China’s next stage of urbanization. Since 2008, with support from the Lingnan Foundation, we have been working closely with colleagues at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. In 2012 we published our first book based on collaboration with Sun Yat-sen University. The book received the “Outstanding Academic Title” award from Choice. For our second book project, in addition to Sun Yat-sen University, we have included new collaborative partners from Shanghai University, Nanjing University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. During 2013-2014 we sponsored two major international conferences, one in Guangzhou in 2013 and the other in Albany in 2014. Papers were selected from many high-quality submissions from students of all of our collaborative universities. For each paper, we assigned a mentor, usually a board member from the UCRN. During the one-year period, students worked with their mentors, who provided guidance, comments, suggestions, and substantive input. In this sense, this volume is the fruit of collective efforts rather than individual pursuits. Another feature of this volume is that these authors provide insiders’ perspectives on urban issues in China. Most authors from the universities in China were doctoral students at the time of writing and have conducted extensive fieldwork on their topics. Some of the students have subsequently taken on faculty positions in Chinese universities. The student authors from the University at Albany are originally from China, and have made frequent trips while working on their research projects. Obviously they have some natural advantages in terms of gaining access to study subjects, talking to physicians and patients, interviewing international migrants from Africa in Guangzhou, or spending substantial amounts of time in earthquake-struck regions in Sichuan province. Thus they have intimate knowledge of the locations and people they study and at the same time they have the ability to frame the research questions in the most relevant scholarly literature at the guidance of their mentors. The result is a collection of research chapters that are theoretically informed and empirically rich discussions of cutting-edge urban issues in China. We also note that some of the topics in this volume belong to the “traditional topics” that urban scholars often study, such as adaptation of migrants in cities, migrant entrepreneurship, affordable housing, and urban residents’ attitudes toward migrants. In these instances the authors have the advantage of making good use of existing theoretical perspectives to explore these topics in the

context of urbanizing China. However, there are new issues that emerge in China that perhaps need new theoretical perspectives and methodologies. For example, the issue of urbanization after disaster (in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake), the increasing arrival of international migrants in Chinese cities, the issue of physician-patient trust in urban China in light of rising costs of medical care, environmental equity between urban and rural China, and mental health of migrant workers. In the field of migration studies, we often deal with international labor flows from poor countries to more developed countries with a market economy, such as the United States. In the age of globalization, we need new thinking and perspectives to understand international migration to countries with mixed economies (with some combination of markets and government controls) such as China. Likewise, in the traditional mainstream literature on environmental justice, the debate is often framed in terms of race and social class. We need a new perspective to examine rural/urban environmental justice issues in China. In addition, some of these issues (e.g., doctor-patient trust or lack of it, or mental health of migrant workers) have captured the media’s attention in China and become socially contentious issues. In this regard, our efforts will not only enrich the field of urban China studies, but also help the public understand important social issues facing urban China today. In the following, we provide a brief summary of each chapter in the book. The book consists of three main parts. The first section examines new patterns of urbanization and challenges in contemporary China. As urbanization continues at breakneck speed, new issues and problems have emerged. These three chapters focus on three very different but equally significant problems related to urbanization. The first chapter, by Lin and Shen, puts forth an innovative and comprehensive approach to measuring and evaluating the level of urbanization, focusing on county-level areas in Fujian Province. Compared to the conventional measurement of demographic urbanization, the authors argue, their integrated and comprehensive measure provides a much fuller picture, taking into consideration not only demographic trends, but also economic and social changes. This new approach is therefore able to reveal the gap between urban population growth and the provision of public services, which has significant policy implications for state and local governments. If the first chapter’s theoretical innovation has broad implications for studying urbanization in general, the second chapter by Zhan and Stapleton tackles the issue of urbanization under an extraordinary circumstance – post-earthquake reconstruction. In 2008, a powerful earthquake caused enormous damage in Sichuan Province. Based on extensive fieldwork in Nanba Village, Sichuan, Zhan and Stapleton study the kind of state-led top-down urbanization that took place in the aftermath of the earthquake. This chapter explores the interactions between the government and the local population, and provides a bottom-up view of the ways in which the society responded and adapted to the state’s top-down urbanization efforts in the post-disaster context. Specifically, it shows how Nanba residents reacted to the transformation of housing in the public spaces in their community, and concludes that rapid government-directed urbanization should do a better job of bridging the gap between the new urban facilities and the lifestyles of

residents. The next chapter, by Wei and Chen, examines a widespread and increasingly serious byproduct of urbanization in China – the problem of urban waste disposal in rural areas. As the urban population expands, the amount of solid waste from urban areas increases, and more often than not it ends up being disposed of in rural areas. Based on fieldwork in M city in Anhui Province, the authors offer a close look at the negative impacts of this practice on local natural environment, economic development, and social stability. This chapter highlights the importance of environmental justice, and sheds light on the growing environmental consciousness among rural residents in China. The second part of the book focuses attention on the experiences and challenges of migrants in contemporary Chinese cities. The first chapter in this section, by Song, addresses an emerging class of migrants: migrant entrepreneurs. These self-employed migrants are primarily engaged in the small-business service sectors in urban areas. Very little is known about this segment of the migrant population despite its rapid increase in both absolute and relative numbers. To fill this gap in the literature, Song analyzes data from a 12-City Migrant Survey conducted in 2009 in four major urbanized regions that attract the majority of internal migrants – the Pearl River Delta, the Bohai Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Chengdu-Chongqing region. Her analyses are oriented toward three overarching questions: Who are these migrants? How are they faring in urban areas? And how are they stratified with respect to human and political capital? The results of her analyses reveal complex patterns. The self-employed tend to have lower levels of human capital than their employee counterparts, and they tend to work longer hours. Furthermore, their economic prospects diverge at different rungs on the income ladder. The self-employed are worse off at lower quantiles of income but better off at higher quantiles. Of particular note is that previous cadre status is associated with significantly increased return for migrant entrepreneurs at higher ends of the income hierarchy. This latter finding illustrates how political capital in rural areas can be converted to economic capital in the self-employed market in contemporary Chinese cities. The chapter by Li and Chunyu addresses the issue of migration from a novel vantage point. Typically, researchers focus on what draws rural migrants to urban areas and to various difficulties that these migrants and the communities in which they settle confront. Li and Chunyu, in contrast, situate the analyses of migration within the context of a labor shortage that has appeared in the Pearl River Delta region over recent years. Accordingly, they focus their attention on the factors that affect rural migrants’ intention to stay in the city for work, which has important implications for maintaining an adequate labor supply to sustain China’s continued economic growth. The topic is also important because intention to stay is closely related to return migration, a longstanding topic for migration researchers. Their analyses are based on data from the 2009 Survey of Migrants. A vexing methodological problem in trying to study intentions about residential choice with survey data on migrants in urban areas is that of selection. The sample of respondents is not a random one. Li and Chunyu address this problem by implementing the Heckman model for sample censoring. Their findings reveal that migrants’ intention to remain in the city to work is affected by an

array of demographic and human capital factors, along with features of the work environment, in a manner generally consistent with a rational choice perspective. The chapter by Liu and Wu directs attention to a core concern affecting prospects for the integration of migrants into their newly acquired environment – the attitudes of locals. As the authors correctly note, the social integration of migrants is a two-way interactive process. Migrants must adapt to the city, but at the same time urban residents must be willing to accept the migrants if they are to be effectively brought into the community. The research on the integration of migrants has focused mainly on the former – the adaption of migrants – rather than the latter – attitudes of locals that affect social integration. To fill this gap in the literature, Liu and Wu examine the general evaluation and attitudes of urban residents for migrant workers, and they investigate the factors that influence the urban residents’ attitudes toward migrants. They base their analyses on questionnaire survey data that were collected in Nanjing in 2012 and in Zhangjiagang in 2013. The results reveal attitudes of local residents that are generally quite positive. For example, respondents recognize that “migrant workers’ tasks are dirty, heavy, and dangerous which citizens would not like to do,” “the economic development of cities cannot be separated from migrant workers’ endeavor” and “migrant workers provide convenience for citizens’ life.” There is also widespread support for greater rights for migrants in the local communities. Factors that have an impact on residents’ attitudes include years lived in the community and social participation. The authors conclude that the “social participation” of the local population might be a useful leverage point for efforts to further improve urban residents’ attitudes toward migrants. Not surprisingly, studies of population movement in China since the economic reform have been devoted largely to internal migration, and especially the massive influx of rural migrants to the cities. Another important demographic development in China over recent decades has been international in-migration or immigration. In particular, China has become a more attractive destination for African immigrants who are seeking employment and business opportunities for short-and long-term stays. The chapter by Zhou and Liang explores this relatively new phenomenon by analyzing the Management and Service Center for Foreigners. This is a government-sponsored institution first established in Guangzhou in 2007. The authors address three overarching questions: Why was this organization created? How does this organization differ from religious institutions, migrant organizations, and other government agencies? What kinds of experiences have African migrants had with this organization? Their analyses are based on public records and field research conducted in Guangzhou during the summers of 2012 and 2013. The results reveal that the Management and Service Center for Foreigners has been dealing reasonably well with a range of difficulties that African immigrants had encountered prior to the establishment of this organization. Moreover, the experiences of the African immigrants with the offered services appear to be generally positive. Part III examines two main challenges in Chinese cities: housing and public health. With the unprecedented privatization in the last three decades, it is increasingly more difficult for urban households, especially those on the lower

rungs of the social ladder, to access decent and affordable housing and health care. Regarding housing, Chinese cities have moved away from a welfareoriented, socialist housing system to a market-oriented private housing system with unprecedented privatization of previously public housing and massive development of new private housing. While the overall standard of housing consumption and the rate of private homeownership have improved significantly over time, there are many problems emerging, such as the lack of affordable housing and rising housing inequality. Despite the aggressive push from the central government in recent years for massive development of affordable housing, the central-local government dynamics can shape the regime of provision of affordable housing. The chapter by She examines the effects of marketization and decentralization on the effectiveness of policy implementation of affordable housing policies. By tracing and comparing affordable housing regime changes at central and local levels between 1998 and 2013, this chapter illustrates the limits of central governments in influencing local policy implementation, despite their control over the policy agenda and discourses at the national level, and their efforts to move away from decentralization to an emphasis on top-down policy design in recent years. By collaborating with local employers and affordable housing developers, local municipal governments selectively implement or adapt central policy initiatives to serve their developmental goals. There are built-in inequalities and imbalanced provision in local affordable housing regimes in recent years, despite the increasing quantity of affordable housing programs and units, which challenges the argument that China has in effect moved toward a more equitable model of the welfare state. With rising housing inequality and housing price in Chinese cities, housing is increasingly becoming a symbol for social status and class identification. The chapter by Liu, Huang, and Zhang studies the role of housing in stratum identification by taking a case study of Shanghai. Through multivariate regression analysis, they argue that housing, especially homeownership and number of owned houses, has a significant impact on stratum identification, in conjunction with other social demographic factors such as education, occupation, and income. Similarly, a major reform is taking place in the health care system, which has resulted in many challenges such as the lack of affordability, poor quality, and accessibility of health care. The three chapters on public health introduce us to three new challenges in Chinese cities: patient-doctor trust, social support of cancer patients, and mental health among migrants. Gong and Chen examine weakening doctor-patient trust, which is demonstrated by increasingly common conflicts and even violence between patients and doctors. Due to the imbalanced distribution of medical resources between cities and between different types of hospitals, patient numbers tend to be concentrated in a few cities and highranking hospitals, which significantly reduces the accessibility of medical services to the masses. This is further worsened by the complicated hospital procedure to see a doctor. Thus there is tremendous dissatisfaction among patients and a lack of trust of doctors. The health care system needs to be redesigned and reformed to restore patient-doctor trust. The chapter by Wang and Messner focuses on a special group of patients – women with breast cancer

– and studies the impact of cancer and social support on these women. Using qualitative methods, they find that breast cancer and the following treatment negatively and profoundly affect women in many different dimensions, such as their bodies, psychology, economic status, social relationships, and sex lives. Thus a strong social support network is needed to facilitate their recovery. Yet in China, social support mainly comes from direct family members, while the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is very limited. They call for an increasing role of NGOs in providing resources and social support to breast cancer patients, and encourage cancer patients to be more active in organizing themselves and seeking support. Lei’s chapter focuses on migrants’ mental health. With the massive volume of migrants in Chinese cities and their marginalized status there, migrants’ mental health has become an important challenge, as indicated by the many suicides of migrant workers in Chinese cities. Using the 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, Lei examines the effects of working conditions, residential environment, and victimization on the mental well-being of migrant workers. The results show that poor living and working conditions and criminal victimization have negative influences on migrant workers’ psychological health. However, ID withholding by employers, infringement of labor rights, and long working hours have a negative impact on mental health only among migrant workers with a level of education of less than high school, but have no influence on those who have a high school degree or above. This shows education can reduce the negative impact of labor rights violations on migrants. To sum up, our book makes important empirical and theoretical contributions to the field of urban China studies and has important policy implications as well. First, we identify new patterns and issues in the course of urbanization in China. These new empirical realities include the crisis of doctor-patient trust, mental health of migrant workers, environmental justice, and the rise of international migration in China. These issues clearly deserve serious attention from both scholars and policy-makers. Second, the new urban realities demand innovative theoretical perspectives to examine these issues. For example, traditional social stratification theory stresses both education and occupation as key elements in the stratification system. Research from our book indicates that in light of the extremely high price of urban housing in major Chinese cities, housing should be treated as another element in the stratification system in urban China that has important consequences for the life chances of individuals and their families. Likewise, our book also offers a new perspective in the study of environmental justice by introducing the rural-urban dimension that is more important in China than in other contexts. In addition, our discussion of service and management centers for foreigners/immigrants in Guangzhou and other cities introduces a new institution and player in the study of immigrant adaptation that the field has never seen before. In the mainstream literature, it is common that institutions like immigrant organizations and churches serve as the “assimilation machine” and help immigrants adapt to the new host country. This new institution clearly deserves further theoretical and empirical analysis by future researchers.