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Chinese Urban Development: Introduction

For scholars interested in how urban processes affect human welfare, it is hard to think of anything more important than urbanisation in China. The sheer numbers of people involved is staggering: roughly 1 out of every 25 people in the world today is a resident of a Chinese city who arrived, or was born, since the current round of economic reforms began in 1978. This has taken place despite China’s unique hukou system of home registration, which restricts permanent migration to cities but allows a large amount of temporary migration, thereby creating a group of urban residents with restricted rights known as the ‘ oating population’. The next few decades promise changes at least as dramatic as those from 1978 to now. China’s agricultural sector is currently extremely labour-intensive. As the drive to modernise and raise living standards spreads beyond the urban coastal regions where it has been concentrated, agriculture will inevitably shed huge numbers of workers. D. Gale Johnson in this Special Issue estimates that 12–15 million non-farm jobs will be required annually just to absorb this surplus labour. A crucial question he addresses is: can such a shift be absorbed through urban migration, or must these jobs be created on a massive scale in rural areas themselves? Migration