ABSTRACT
The past seven decades since the founding of the Peoples’ Republic of China, especially the past four decades since reform and opening up, has witnessed great achievements of social and economic development in urbanization, with urbanization rate soaring to 65.2% in 2022. During the years of planned economy from 1940 to 1977, China went through rapid industrialization by prioritizing the heavy industry, producing a large number of industrial cities. After the reform and opening-up in 1978, China’s urbanization took-off. In 1996, China’s urbanization rate exceeded 30%, signaling the explosion stage of urbanization dominated by industrialization. In 2011, China’s urbanization rate exceeded 50% for the first time, marking a new stage of urbanization with industrial transformation and upgrading. Since 2012, building competitive city clusters has become a goal for China’s development and its prevailing model in urbanization. At this stage, urbanization rate of China continued to increase by 1 percentage point per year. Years of development has been translated to breakthroughs in urbanization and urban development, with continuously optimized urban structure and form, improved urban landscape and residents’ quality of life, and enhanced public services and governance. Nevertheless, there are still several outstanding issues and challenges for China’s urbanization in the new stage.
