China needs
to improve its urbanization towards it path to industrialization.
Only 44.9% of the 1.3 billion Chinese population were
urbanized as of the end of 2007, compared with an
average 70% for developed countries. Even though there
is a additional of 1-1.5% or 12-18 million people
migrated from rural to urban per year.
The lower urbanization
rate and a large rural population created unbalance
of in farmers’ living standards and wealth. Farmers
have to face increased farming cost such as price
of land (the per capita less than 1 mu (0.06 hectare)
farming land), and the declining grain prices. Furthermore,
due to the fact that rural and urban economies are
mutually-separated, farmers are not able to increase
their income neither can they benefits from China’s
rapid economic growth.
The Chinese government
came out with several policies and programs solve
these problems. According to the China's Ecological
Modernization Report 2007, the next two decades (2020~2030)
will be an extremely crucial period for China's modernization
as China will progressively complete industrialization
and urbanization.
Below is the chart of
trends of industrialization and urbanization in China from year 1978 - 2008:
