Abstract
One of the defining features of the more than three decades of economic transformation of China has been the strategy of urbanisation. Along with industrialisation, urbanisation was regarded as a necessary condition for spurring development. The book China’s Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History is a portrayal of the rising urbanisation phenomenon in the country and the various multifaceted challenges it throws up. The book is part of the publisher’s ‘Asian Arguments’ series, that consists of works dealing with environment, democracy and social development, seeking to provide a bottom-up approach to issues directly concerning the common people. Out of the seven books published under the series, six are focused on the various social issues regarding China.
The author describes the book, which consists of six main chapters apart from the introduction and conclusion, as having emerged from his travels through 85 cities on the Chinese mainland. The introduction notes that according to Chinese estimates, the country’s urban population would swell to a billion by 2030, thus generating the need for building megacities; however, this overdrive has resulted in contradictions of spectacular development on the one hand and inequities on the other. The pace of modernisation has also resulted in significant worsening of social stratification. The book attempts to explore two key elements—the kind of lives China’s urban billion is expected to lead and the appearance of Chinese cities. The author’s blueprint for more robust and sustainable urbanisation involves the movement of huge numbers of rural migrants into the cities, and integrating them into urban life by ensuring liveable conditions.
Having set the tone in the introduction, the author moves to the first chapter that focuses on the flow of rural migrant labour into urban China. Designating the migrant workers as the builders of the country, the author details the various categories and sub-categories of the ‘floating population’ (liudong renkou)—among whom sizeable sections are women—who move mainly into the industrial zones on the southern and eastern coasts. While the migrant workers contributed to the flourishing of urban centres, they also became the country’s underbelly, segmented as second-class citizens through the tight regulatory controls of the hukou system as well as on account of urban prejudices.
Flowing from the first chapter, the second chapter deals with the issue of the hukou system that ties the welfare entitlements of individuals to the place of their residence and thereby intransigently demarcates the rural and urban population. 1 Identified as one of the chief reasons for the widening social inequalities in China, the local governments have also resisted large-scale relaxations in the system. Though various pilot schemes have been constantly experimented with in many cities to alter the system and make it more flexible, constraints of skewed resources, along with the lopsided fiscal system that concentrates powers of revenue in the hands of the centre, mean that reforms are largely half-hearted and piecemeal. The chapter has also devoted attention to the experiments carried out in Chongqing since 2007, which has been termed the ‘Chongqing Model’. One of the key elements in this experimental model was the affordable public housing scheme for the migrant workers.
Land, which is a critical component of China’s urbanisation strategy, is the theme of the third chapter. Given the rising conflicts over land expropriation in the urban regions, the author laments the lack of transparent and robust individual property rights. While legal instruments such as the Land Management Law and Rural Contracting Law have been formulated in the recent past, proper enforcement is a serious lacuna. The author underlines the need for an improved land market with clear demarcation of property rights, for getting maximum monetary values for China’s farmland. The author also draws attention to the Chongqing city government’s experimentation in establishing a land credit system through a rural property exchange for the purpose, and auctioning of land values to boost rural financial reform. However, he also apprehends the formation of speculative property bubbles in the long term under this experiment.
The fourth chapter concentrates on the enormous urban sprawl, emanating from the frenzy for building megacities. Likening the explosion of the urban housing and infrastructural construction to an ‘orgy’, the author opines that the unplanned extension of city limits raises serious challenges of congestion, waste and environmental degradation. The lopsided revenue and taxation system skewed in a manner unfavourable to the local governments is seen as the reason behind the rampant construction and land usage. Alternate and efficient models of city building, such as clustering the development of small cities around larger ones called the ‘hub-and-spoke’ method, has also been spoken about by consultancy firms. The author firmly believes that the demarcation of Chinese cities into different tiers and efficient mass transit systems augurs well for the mission to develop sustainable urban spaces.
Though the fifth chapter starts with the phenomenon of ‘ghost cities’, which are empty residential complexes without occupants, it moves further to explore China’s vision of constructing cities. The author is cautious about reading too much into the ghost cities phenomenon, since he believes it to be a part of the growth of urban agglomerates. He believes that eventually they would be occupied as part of the process of bolstering the suburbs of existing cities through the relocation of urbanites from the city centre. According to the author, the typical imagery of the grey, ugly and congested Chinese urban landscape is reflective of its authoritarian system. The legacy of the top-down Soviet model influenced urban planning and design, and this has continued to prevail. While this approach did result in uniformity and grandiosity in anticipation of the future, it impeded the organic evolution of cities. The building of Beijing-like prototypes across the country, combined with unhealthy competition between cities, overinvestment and endless construction, also reflected the local leadership’s obsession to showcase their own urban agglomerations for suitable rewards. To address ecological concerns and the need for efficient use of resources, the author stresses the need to further promote and constantly expand the already existing excellent mass transit networks of subways and light rail.
The sixth chapter addresses the rising consumerist, aspirational living styles of the urban populace. While China’s economic model has been focused on exports, the author believes that there was a need to reorient towards boosting domestic consumption. The Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang leadership, post-2012, has underlined the need for augmenting domestic demand. Optimistic signs have appeared in the form of big brands and retail chains expanding into tier-two, tier-three and tier-four cities, by being cognisant of local preferences, tastes and interests. To expand urban consumption, the author suggests the need for allowing rural migrants to become full urban citizens, raise household incomes and reduce incentives for higher savings.
In his conclusion, the author has alluded to the movement of people from the countryside to the cities as a transition towards civilisation, thus evoking a strong sense of cities being the sites of modernity. The aim of making Chinese cities liveable needs to be visualised as building the capacities and capabilities for absorbing the multitude of human lives within them. To achieve this objective, the author underlines the need for making tangible reforms to the hukou system and untying the social security entitlements of the migrant workforce from their registration status and integrating them, not only into the urban land space but also into the mind space of cities. Equally, he seeks more reforms in land-use rights and reconfiguration of the prevailing fiscal system by correcting its lopsidedness to make it more balanced between the centre and the provinces.
The author has also made brief comparisons with the Indian experience, noting that even though cities in India have maintained their historical heritage and character, conditions of social deprivation and inadequate infrastructure are sharper than in China.
Overall, the book deals with the main facets and related issues connected to China’s urbanisation experience. The author has intertwined vivid descriptions with personal stories of individuals and anecdotes. He has also added a tinge of romanticism to some chapter titles and has sequenced the chapters in a logical and seamless manner. However, the biggest limitation of the book is that it does not go beyond description. The book resembles more of a journalistic account than an academic work that rigorously interrogates the various nuanced processes at work. The analytical component is missing in some areas, such as the dynamics that operate in land-related issues or the fine print of the working of the local government investment companies (LGICs) that fund infrastructural activities in the cities. One would have imagined that having spent a decade living in China, the author was well placed to probe deeper and more minutely into all the issues he has brought to the forefront. However, notwithstanding these shortcomings, it is a very informative and timely book for all those interested in the issue of Chinese urbanisation and the current trajectory of the country’s economic development in general.