China Expects to Have Over 1,000 Cities By 2015China expects to see fast urbanization in the next 15 years, with the number of cities forecast to rise to more than 1,000 by 2015.According to a senior official with the Ministry of Construction, China will have an urban development rate of around 50 percent and a total urban population of 600 million by 2015. He said that in the process of the fast-growing urbanization, China will strictly control the number and scale of large and extra-large cities and giving greater room to medium-sized and small cities as well as small rural towns. China has so far developed 668 cities. Most of these cities are concentrated in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, as well as on the eastern Liaoning Peninsula and in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area. Some 200 medium-sized cities have been developed on the basis of fast-growing towns. The official said that rapid urbanization has improved the uneven distribution of cities across eastern and western China. The east is home to 44 percent of cities and the west 19 percent. He added that the country spends 140 billion yuan annually on the development of urban infrastructure facilities. Most of the funds come from various localities and non-government organizations. |
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