ABSTRACT
From the perspective of China, the dynamics of change unleashed in 1979 with new reform policies are historic and breathtaking, as the society with "the longest and largest continuous urban cultural tradition" in the world irrevocably industrializes and urbanizes. The author apologizes for the infelicitous introduction of the neologisms and offers the rationale that urbanization as a conceptual frame is too broad to describe the urbanization process in contemporary China. To some analysts of Asian urbanization, such developments might reflect the emergence in China of a new pattern of Asian urbanization, the desakota process. The urbanization of China since 1980 is causing the entire spectrum to become more city-like, but such a generalization masks great diversity and complexity. In Asia, desakotas emerge without large-scale migration, but large-scale migration is certainly happening in China. If desakotas are arising in China, then they are desakotas with Chinese characteristics.
