China's Industrialization with Controlled Urbanization: Anti-Urbanism or Urban-Biased?

Abstract

The Chinese experience of urbanization has often been perceived as a "unique case" because of its peculiar pattern of rapid industrialization without a parallel growth of the urban population. This paper assesses major theoretical attempts to understand the dynamics of China's urbanization. Two competing interpretations of the Chinese experience are identified. Early studies of urban China attributed the pattern of stagnant urbanization to the Communist ideology of "anti- urbanism." A recent school of thought contends that the real motive for limiting urban growth was to maintain urban manageability, enhance national security, and minimize urban consumption cost so that capital input in the industrial sector could be maximized. A close examination of China's urban development, however, reveals no single factor capable of explaining the entire and sophisticated picture of urbanization. Urban development in China is a complex outcome of dual-track urbanism which accommodates both rhetoric and pragmatism although the emphasis may shift from time to time. The Chinese case is found particularly illustrative of the mechanism of interplay between the changing political economy and the transformation of space over time.