The Chinese City

Abstract

The rapid growth and the succesful catching up of the Chinese economy as well as its spectacular impacts on urban growth (sixty cities have of over 1 million inhabitants) attract a great interest worldwide. In this paper, we are looking an answer for the following question: how this urban development is an endogenous process, based on the long run trajectory of Chinese urbanisation and how it reflects / follows the general patterns of recent globalised urban development?

We concluded that Chinese urbanisation has always been unique. Here are a few evidences: a) Chinese urbanisation has been the only uninterrupted, continous one all over the world since over 3 000 years; b) the economic functions of the cities, their social structure and social organisation, urban land use and urban planning as well as urban governance has always been differerent to any other urban zone of the world; c) recent, market-led urbanisation has been unique so far, as the urban growth has been strictly controlled by the government (the share of urban populatíon is still but 35-40% to the total one); there is a specific regulation of rural to urban migration; the clear evidence of the rank- size rule within the urban system, what is non-existent in any other third world or emerging economies. Overpopulation and poverty has been kept back in the countryside – which, in long run could lead to important socio-economic conflicts.