Concrete Analysis | Private capital plays a key role in China's urbanisation plan
Public Private Partnerships provide an innovative solution to tackle the challenges of high local government debt and future urbanisation needs
Last year is likely to be remembered as a landmark year for China's new vision for urbanisation and the ramifications this has on the country's future economic and social development for years to come. The announcement of the National New-type Urbanisation Plan (2014-2020) on March 16, marked the country's first official plan covering urbanisation.
The scope of the plan provides not only much better insights into how the country is expected to develop but also potential opportunities that urbanisation on the massive scale envisaged may bring.
According to the plan, the urbanisation rate at the end of 2013 was 53.7 per cent. The target by 2020 is for the number of permanent urban residents to reach 60 per cent of the population. This would involve moving 90 million to 100 million rural residents.
Another objective is for 100 million migrant workers and permanent urban residents to obtain city household registration ( hukou) by 2020, representing 75 per cent of total permanent urban residents, which will increase demand on basic services.
The core theme of the plan is improving the quality of urbanisation with people as the focal point, which in turn drives many of the government's policies, especially in terms of development of basic services, social housing, transport, environmental issues, modernisation of industries and optimising city functions and layouts.
The infrastructure requirements required to cater for the new urban residents in small towns, small cities, regional cluster cities as well as continued development of the major cities, are immense and funding is one of the biggest challenges.