LONDON, March 19 — China’s urbanisation rate will increase to 67percent with 940 million population living in cities by 2030, said a report published here Tuesday.
London-based think tank The Economist Intelligence Unit forecast that China’s urbanisation rate will increase to 61 percent by 2020 before reaching 67 percent in 2030, Xinhua news agency reported.
In absolute terms, the urban population will reach close to 940 million by 2030 while the number of people living in the countryside will fall to around 450 million.
“China’s march towards becoming an urbanised society will continue in the coming decades. This trend will continue in the next 20 years, when China will remain the main force driving global urbanisation,” said the report.
The report said that in absolute numbers eastern China, led by Guangdong, will see the largest increase of 124 million over the 2010-30 period in its urban population.
Central China will follow with a rise of 71 million over the period. By 2030, around one-fifth of China’s prefecture-level cities will be left behind with an urbanisation rate below 50 percent, while another one-fifth will go beyond the key threshold of 80 percent, placing them on a par with cities in developed economies.
If the process is managed well, urbanisation could help to sustain China’s long-term economic growth as urban economies are more productive than those in rural areas, the report opined.
“Policies to pump up urban population growth beyond the level that demographic and economic trends will support are likely to result in distortions and waste, not to mention corruption,” the report warned.
—BERNAMA
