China faces both opportunities and challenges brought about by rapid urbanisation. Managing urbanisation will be a major policy concern for the Chinese government to maintain sustainable development. By bringing millions of rural migrant workers into cities, China is rapidly urbanising and becoming the 'world factory'. While achieving sustained rates of economic growth, China has also seen a series of consequences such as increasing energy and water consumption, enlarging ruralurban inequalities and poverty and ensuring finance of urban infrastructure and maintaining effective and good governance.
This forward-looking book comprises the papers that originally contributed to a World Bank study, 'China's Development Priorities', organised by Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima. The chapters in this volume of China Urbanizes assess a wide range of consequences, strategies and policy implications of Chinese urbanisation. The topics include the process of urbanisation, rural-urban inequalities, migration, poverty, finance, energy policy, water and urban government.
In the first chapter, Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima provide a panoramic review of Chinese urbanisation and urban development and policy recommendations. Based on collective assessment of China's urbanisation, Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima propose a series of urban development policies, including narrowing rural-urban gaps, directing migrant flows and managing urban growth, financing urban development, providing urban social services, limiting increases in urban energy consumption, dealing with the scarcity of water and managing urbanisation. In addition, they propose specific policy actions such as increasing human capital, managing the flow of migration, deepening financial markets, improving cities' fiscal efforts, containing energy costs, managing water resources and reducing pollution. These are very useful policy recommendations that deserve careful consideration of policy makers. Their recommendations suggest how to turn the strategic goals of managing urbanisation into policies: some are more difficult to implement, such as using hukou to 'direct migrant flows from areas with declining agricultural potential and water shortages to urban areas with better growth possibilities' (p. 28), as Chinese rural to urban migration is more or less spontaneous and not managed by the state, while others should be implemented with some urgency, such as the 'need to create a durable fiscal system that can meet future and current capital needs, taking account of the anticipated growth rates of urban economies and populations' (p. 29).
Some chapters are based on long-term scholarship conducted by the authors. For example, Cindy Fan is an indisputable authority on Chinese migration study and has conducted extensive studies on China's migration and migrants. Her chapter provides one of the best syntheses I have seen on the topic of migration and hukou. First, Cindy Fan examines the hukou system and its reform. Then she discusses migration patterns and changes, including different definitions of the 'floating population' and migrants, reasons for migration and migrants' characteristics. She continues to assess the impact of migration on urban areas and rural areas. Finally, she argues the need for a comprehensive policy to deal with both urban and rural areas, because 'migrants in China straddle the city and countryside' (p. 82) and suggests the need to deal with issues such as left-behind children and the elderly.
In the final chapter, Tony Saich examines the changing role of urban government. He notes a very high capacity for governance in China, with a high percentage of residents approving of the government's performance. He observes the downward shift of governance, i.e. towards lower-levels of authorities. He suggests that China 'has witnessed a de facto transfer of new responsibilities to