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Empty new commercial buildings in the Chinas Manhattan Project in Binhai New Area, Tianjin. Unrealistic expectations of growth have created ghost towns across the country and even within major cities. Photo: Imaginechina

How high can China’s population possibly go? Ambitious urban plan to house 3.4 billion people sparks concern

For one thing, the projected combined population of thousands of new centres is 3.4 billion – 2.5 times the current population

Ambitious expansion plans by small and medium towns across China have lead to the creation of more than 3,500 “new areas” for residential and economic use raising fears many are destined to become ghost towns.

The combined projected population of these new areas is an “impossible” 3.4 billion people – 2.5 times the current number of people in the country, experts say. The world’s population today stands at 7.3 billion, according to the US Census Bureau.

Beijing has pinned high hopes on making urbanisation a new engine of growth as the economy matures and slows. But the number of towns that have rushed to join the urbanisation wave has outpaced the central government’s plans.

Xinhua citied a study by the National Development and Reform Commission, the top state planning body that as of May, the 3,500 new areas included 17 administered at the national level (like Shanghai’s Pudong New Area), 500 economic development zones of various descriptions, 1,600 provincial level industrial parks, 1,000 city level new areas and tens of thousands of industrial parks at the town level.

Many small to medium-sized towns aimed to double their populations between 2020 and 2030.

“The planned population is so much higher than the current population that it clearly will not work,” Xu Fengxian, an expert on regional economy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

The urbanisation goals also run counter to demographic forecasts of slowing population growth, even allowing for the recent decision to allow couples to have a second child.

Academics predict the national population will peak in 2030 before gradually declining to 1.6 billion by 2050.

Wang Yukai, a professor at the National School of Administration, told Xinhua that the main force of urbanisation was rural residents relocating to towns.

“Even taking into consideration their willingness to become urban residents, or if they can afford to make the move, there is no way they could fill the 3.4 billion target,” Wang said.

For the NDRC, even relocating 100 million people to meet the goals of the 13th Five Year Plan is a daunting task, which states that by 2020, 60 per cent of mainlanders will live in cities, and that 45 per cent of urban dwellers will have urban household registrations. Household registration entitles to the holder to work and enjoy services such as health and schooling in the town of birth. There are moves to make household registrations more readily transferable to other cities so that, for example, children of migrant workers can live with their parents and attend school in the cities.

But even among those willing to immigrate to cities, very few are willing to resettle in small or medium-sized towns. An NDRC report on urbanisation found that 70 per cent of migrant workers went to municipal level cities while less than 10 per cent went to small or medium-sized ones.

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