China’s new urban dwellers really still live in the countryside, study says
- Increase in numbers of people ‘relocating’ to urban areas due to land reclassification not migration, researchers say
- Claims based on official data relating to demographic changes to 700,000 communities between 2009 and 2017
About a third of China’s new urban residents actually lived rural lives, according to a recent study, suggesting Beijing’s claims about the success of its urbanisation programme have been significantly overstated.
The study, carried out by economists from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu and Nankai University in Tianjin, is based on demographic changes to 700,000 communities across the country between 2009 and 2017.
“These communities, though statistically reclassified as urban, retain their basic rural characteristics,” said Gan Li, who led the study. “Residents in these communities continue to share similar living conditions with rural villagers, even years after being reclassified.”
These communities, though statistically reclassified as urban, retain their basic rural characteristics
The period covered by the research coincided with Beijing’s efforts to speed up the movement of people from rural to urban areas in a bid to shore up slowing economic growth and redress the problems of a rapidly ageing population.
In 2014, Beijing set a goal to “urbanise” 100 million people by 2020, however, the central government is moving towards that goal by simply reclassifying rural areas, meaning that millions of rural dwellers have become urban folk without ever leaving their homes, the researchers found.
The study adds fuel to the debate over the actual rate of urbanisation in China, which the government put at 60 per cent at the end of 2018, with a target of 75 per cent by 2035.