China's urban population to hit 800 million by 2020

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

The urban population in inland China will surpass 800 million by 2020, and a total of more than 100 million Chinese from rural areas will have migrated to cities by then, according to the Chinese Transient Population Development Report 2011, which was released today.

The majority of the 40 million newcomers to cities are drawn to large metropolitan areas, such as those areas surrounding the Bo Sea, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. Approximately 25 percent of rural-urban migrants nationwide have selected these areas.

This report, issued by the State Population and Family Planning Commission after a dynamic monitoring survey of the migrant population of 106 cities nationwide, says that in the next 10 years there will be more than 70 million new migrants to the city, 36 percent of the national sum, in 18 urban agglomerations and urbanized areas, including the Harbin-Changchun urban agglomeration and the southeast Fujian province urban agglomeration.

Meanwhile, apart from urban agglomerations and their coverage areas, about 1,000 middle-sized and small cities and small towns will also absorb 30 million new city residents, 39 percent of the national sum.

In order to further the population urbanization development soundly, the report suggests strengthening the fundamental position of the population development plan in the process of urbanization, setting up a convergence mechanism for significant special plans, building a population estimation mechanism for important construction projects and establishing a population early warning mechanism.

For carrying forward the construction of the entire population information system and cultivation of floating population dynamic monitoring information resources, the report also calls for a perfected population information management.