Is China Already Urban?
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
The tipping point in a country’s development is often marked by the moment its population goes from mostly rural to mostly urban.
China is supposed to hit that critical mass of city-dwellers in 2010, but economist Guo Shuqing, chairman of China Construction Bank and a delegate to the recent national party congress, says the nation is already well past that: He believes that currently 60 to 65 percent of Chinese live in cities, around 900 million people.
The Chinese government’s official number is 577 million, or 44 percent of the population, according to Xinhua. Guo recently told China Daily that his number comes from the World Bank’s definition of an urbanite, which counts anyone living in a city at least three months a year who is not a farmer or a migrant worker.