Urbanization Boosts China's Local Economies

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, October 20, 2002

Urbanization Boosts China's Local Economies

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Economic development in the Yangtze River Delta proves that urbanization has become a driving force for economic growth in the area, according to Chen Shupeng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The scholar made the remarks at the International Conference On Yangtze Delta Development 2002 (ICYDD 2002) which ended Sunday in this capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province.

The delta covers Shanghai, the largest city and economic center of east China, and parts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which are also economically developed.

Thanks to an urbanization rate of about 40 percent, Chen said, the Yangtze River Delta now boasts a gross industrial output value equivalent to 21 percent of China's total, as against an area that accounts for only 1 percent of the nation's total.

As the urbanization is proceeding at a quickened pace, nine cities along the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou highway and railway as well as along the Grand Canal, have actually joined with each other. They are now powerful in finance, trade, education, scienceand technology as well as in culture, helping drive up the economic development in the whole Yangtze River valley.

The cities also play an important role in gearing up domestic to overseas markets, attracting foreign capital and pushing forward technological transfer.

Currently, the major cities on the delta including Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Suzhou are suburbanizing for further expansion.

Take Shanghai as an example. It is working on a unified development scheme for 100 towns in its suburban areas, as part ofits plan to have some 8 million residents at suburbs outside its outer belt roads, including 6 million of urban dwellers, in 2020.

By then, no skyscrapers will be allowed to be built in new-type residential quarters in the areas, from which it will take 15 minutes at most for efficient commuter cars to get to the expressway network of the city.

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