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Model Solution Sought to Future Urban Sprawl
Experts have called on China to choose a suitable model to ensure urbanization in the country is achieved properly, citing the rapid expansion of cities as the key issue in its future, according to today's China Daily.
The comments were made in speeches at the Development Strategy for Megalopolis held in Shanghai on Monday which was organized by the State Development Planning Commission and Japan International Co-operation Agency. It was co-sponsored by China Daily.
More than 300 experts from China and Japan attended the seminar and sought ways of how to best promote urbanization in China.
"Now China is facing huge pressure from migrant people with more than 70 million farm workers moving to cities," said Zhou Muzhi, senior economist at the Japan International Co-operation Agency. "So to choose a correct developing model for cities in the country is a key issue."
Discussions about the development scale of cities have been ongoing in the research field. They centre on whether the small or medium-scale city or the metropolis most suits China's current situation.
"As a country under industrialization, China urgently needs a pattern of urbanization predominated by large cities on account of efficiency, " Zhou said.
"In addition, the lack of available land also demands the urbanization policy put an emphasis on the development of metropolitan areas in China."
A number of cities are expected to grow into megalopolises that lead Chinese economic development and international exchanges, according to experts attending the seminar.
In particular , those in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta are expected to attract increasingly large numbers of domestic economic activities and have intensive interaction with the global economy.
"Since the country's reform and opening up policy was launched, there have been three megalopolis economic zones formed in Beijing-Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong," said Sit Fung-shuen, professor from the University of Hong Kong.
The utilization of foreign capital and exports in these three zones accounts for 73 per cent of the country's total while their combined area is only 1.24 per cent , according to statistics for the past 20 years.
The population of the Yangtze River Delta increased by 11.62 million from 1999 to 2000. The population in Shanghai increased by 3.6 million during the same period, according to statistics.
But in the next 20 to 30 years, China will have megalopolises with populations double or even triple that of Tokyo with its current population of 30 million, which is the largest megalopolis in terms of population in the world.
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