China’s Urbanization Process

The theme of this chapter is to investigate the urbanization process of China over time. China’s urbanization process is complex as it has a long history of urban formation and development. Compared with some of the developed countries, China’s urbanization occurred much earlier in time and much larger in scale. Therefore, China’s urbanization process needs to be understood by a renewed framework namely the stratigraphic framework which is presented in the first section. By following this framework, the following sections explore the urbanization process chronologically. Regarding ancient China, section two has paid great emphasis on the first movement of city construction and the great development of cities all through this long period. In contemporary China, many forces had shaped the development of cities/town in China and thus the urbanization process. Regarding this, the third section devotes to explain with details how industrialization, economic reform, economic globalization, and ecological civilization construction has shaped China’s urbanization. The last section focuses on the urbanization process in New China with specific analysis from the perspective of spatial density, distance, and division.