Whole essay(first draft)-Nero

Title:

To what extent can the problems of urbanisation be met by a policy of sustainable development?

-What are the problems of urbanisation in China and the existing solution and possible solution?

Introduction

“Urbanization is a historic transformation process by which the means of production and people’s lifestyles evolve from the country to the city. While this process is often characterized as farmers’ migration to cities and the continuing development of cities” (Wen, undated). It not only includes movement from rural area to urban area but also include the changes of migrants’ attitudes, habits, behavior and life style. In the present age, urbanization is playing a significant role in the development of society and economy. It can reflect the level of social development and civilization of a country as well (Zhao & Liu 2010). Urbanisation was caused by industrialisation and technological development in developed countries, such as in Europe and North America. The huge economic and social changes were happened gradually. From 19^th to early 20^th centuries, industrialisation and technology developed very fast in these countries or regions. A vast number of opportunities were created for workers who were from rural areas (Wang & Hu 1999). The process of urbanisation comes out rapidly all over the world. In the meantime, urbanisation has caused many problems, such as crimes, environmental pollution, overcrowded housing, high unemployment and traffic jam. Governments attempt to solve these problems. A serial of policies were introduced. Many policies solved these problems effectively, but some of them could affect our future lives. For instance, aim to solve the problem of overcrowded housing, some governments decided to destroy some traditional architecture or cut plenty of trees to build tall buildings. It could solve this problem at this moment, but in the long run it will cause many other serious problems. Therefore, the concept of ‘sustainable development’ was tabled. Sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (wordIQ.com, undated). Sustainable development not only consider present but also consider the effects of the future. Increasing people suggest that sustainable development should be adopted to solve the problems of urbanisation. Personally, I agree with this opinion. Sustainable development can improve our living condition and environment.

China is a developing country. Urbanisation has encouraged both the development of economy and society hugely, but the situation of urbanisation in developing countries is different from developed countries. China has the largest number of population in our world. It brings more negative effects.

This essay will talk about the different problems which caused by urbanisation in China, it will focus on crimes, unemployment and overcrowded housing, I will analyse these three problems and give some existing policies of solving these problems and possible solutions, then will discuss whether they can effectively solve those problems and use some evidences to illustrate that sustainable development could be successful. Furthermore, some limitation will be given at the end of this essay.

Negative effects of urbanisation

During the past 2 decades, the economy is growing quite fast in China. After joining the World Trade Organisation(WTO), China becomes a significant role in the world economy. Considering the fast economic growth of China, some economists and experts assert that urbanisation starts in China quite later than developed countries and regions. The authority of China must adopt a series of policies to catch up with these developed countries. Indeed, the Chinese government permit rural people move to urban area in order to accelerate the process of urbanisation(Wen, undated). There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. With the huge amount of population, China has to be confronted with the unprecedented challenge of urbanisation.

Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, China Statistical yearbook, various issues


The Chinese population growth rate in urban area is particularly high. It includes both natural increase and increasing farmer moving into cities. The increasing population needs more housing, facilities and space to live(Wang & Hu 1999). Over-crowded housing becomes a serious problem in many big cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hongkong. It caused many problems:

Firstly, due to the huge amount of farmers migrating into big cities, lots of them cannot find any rooms to live. More and more homeless people appear. Secondly, many migrants have to live in one small room with the other people. Poor living condition caused many health issues and infectious disease.

After looking at over-crowded housing, we should now focus on another urbanisation problem – unemployment. Urbanisation of a city should provide more jobs to its residents, but in China, the situation is different. A vast number of people in Chinese cities need plenty of jobs while the narrow employment opportunities cannot meet residents’ needs. Furthermore, increasing migrations moving into cities caused high competitions. In 2002, the number of employees who work for state-owned firms fell from 75millions to 40 millions. More than 20millions people lost their jobs. Until June 2004, nearly 8.37millions urban residents were unemployed(Wen, undated). Otherwise, in China, the reason of many poor rural people moving into big cities is that they could not find any jobs in countries rather than they get a job in urban area. They just think that if they move into cities, they will have better lives (Wang & Hu 1999). In fact, when they move into cities, most of them cannot find a job because of both high competitions and less skills. That causes more and more unemployment.

In addition, urbanisation also could affect social stability. Chinese authority has emphasized many times that social stability is the most important task. Unfortunately, uncontrolled urbanisation makes lots of rural people moving into cities almost in same period, and it caused many potential social issues. Many people could not find any jobs. They cannot gain enough money to guarantee their basic lives, therefore, some of them decided to be criminals, such as thieves ,robbers or the others, who could get some money through using illegal methods(Wen, undated).

Considering the reasons of those three problems, we can understand that too many unemployed people in large cities is the main problem. If the governments want to solve these problems, they should first find a way to create more jobs to meet those unemployed people.

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Policy of sustainable development

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Having introduced some urbanisation problems, we should now focus on some successful policies of sustainable development. Aim to solve those urbanisation problems, the Chinese government carries out a series of strategies to face these unprecedented challenges. First of all, after the economic reform, Chinese government revised its strategies. The authority has implemented a small town development policy to develop rural areas instead of engaging enormous workforce move into big cities. The authority encouraged rural farmers to do some non-farm activities, such as animal husbandry, fishery and handicrafts. In the mean time, the government encouraged farmers to transfer their jobs in local industry, construction, transportation and the other service(Wang & Hu 1999). In 1984, the Chinese government adopted new policy to liberalise rural trade. Farmers are allowed to engage selected goods between town and countries and to adopt household registration in small town to engage in commerce. They could be responsible for their own goods supplies (Wang & Hu 1999). In 1987, China adopted a strategy which is an export-oriented development. Many rural products closely link to the export sector (Wang & Hu 1999). These policies effectively created enormous job opportunities in rural areas. When big cities are too crowded and lacking job opportunities, those small towns can supply lots of job opportunities. Furthermore, to create more job opportunities, huge investments are needed. Facing to the challenges, China attempts to reproduce the rural urbanisation model on nationwide scale. If the government sent all of surplus workforce to towns, it would be more than 2 times of the current population. Therefore, a vast number of new towns will needed to be develop(Gale & Dai, 2002). Indeed, this kind of huge investment will spend plenty of money and resources to build housing, roads, water and sewer, electric and gas systems for new town, but in the mean time, it will create a vast number of jobs (Gale & Dai, 2002). The occurrence of these jobs could reduce unemployment. Since 1978, small towns have developed rapidly in main land of China. Many new towns were built in China. In 1979, almost 2400 small towns housed about 55.56millions people, but in 1995, according to China’s Ministry of Construction, more than 50,000 small towns occurred in China. Small town development was progressed rapidly in coastal cities. For instance, in Shanghai, the number of small towns had increased from 1070 to 2300 in 2 decades. In the Zhujiang Delta, the number increased from 21 to 188 form1982 to 1987. The increased small towns absorbed a vast number of rural surplus workforces (Wang & Hu 1999).

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Given two existing sustainable development police, let us look at another two possible solutions. Firstly, the west of China is an important investment area in China. In the western area, the urbanisation rate is still very low. In 2007, the urbanisation rate of the western China is only 37.83% while the rate in the east is 60.47%, and the average rate is 44.94%. Obviously, the low urbanisation rate prevents the improvement of national urbanisation rate. Only the urbanisation rate of Inner Mongolia and Chongqing are higher than the average rate of China (Zhao & Liu , 2010). If the government implemented a policy to send the huge number of surplus workforce to the western area, the west of China would be urbanized faster. In the mean time, the urbanisation of west of China would be able to create plenty of jobs as well. Secondly, finding approaches to send Chinese rural labour to work in the other countries is another good methods to solve unemployment problems. It is not only a good way to make the farmers getting rich but also a good way to improve farmers' views and their work skills. These benefits could equip them and make them have enough abilities and skills to find a job when then come back (Wen, undated).

After showing these existing policies of sustainable development and possible solutions, we can understand that in China, the key methods of solving those urbanisation problems, such as over-crowded housing, unemployment and crimes are jobs creation and encourage surplus workforce to develop those less developed area, such as rural area, small towns and western China. As a result, the two existing solution effectively reduce the negative effects of urbanisation. It can fully testify that a policy of sustainable development could effectively solve urbanisation problems. The investment of western China and accelerating the pace of international employment are good way to solve urbanisation problems as well, because they can also create plenty of jobs to absorb rural surplus workforces.However, these two methods both have some limitations. Not all of people are willing to or have enough ability to migrate to western China or go to the other countries. The weather of western China is not as pleasant as the east of China, and the desertification of some western area is quite serious. In addition, not all of rural farmers have enough money to go to the other countries to find a job without any economic aid.

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Conclusion

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To summarise, in China, urbanisation has caused many serious problems, including over-crowded housing, unemployment and increasing crime rate. Chinese government has reduced the effects of these urbanisation problems effectively through adopting some policies of sustainable development. It can illustrate that urbanisation problems could be solved by sustainable development. However, due to the largest number of population of the world in China, they are still big problems in the modern society. The Chinese government should carry out some new policies of sustainable development to further solve these problems. The investment of western China and accelerating the pace of international employment are two possible solutions, but they both have some limitation. The authority of main land of China should consider both the benefits and limitation of these two possible solutions. If the government can adopt some new policies to reduce these limitation, these two possible solutions will be good methods to solve urbanisation problems effectively.

Reference:

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Gale Fred & Dai Hongguo(2002) Small Town Development in China, A 21^st Century Challenge, Rural America, vol17, issue 1 pp.12-19.[online ] Available from:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ruralamerica/ra171/ra171b.pdf

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Wang Gabe T & Hu xiaobo (1999) Small town development and rural urbanization in China, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 29:1, pp.76-94. [online] Available from:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a778632865

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Wen Guoming (undated) Cautions on China’s Urbanization. [online] Available from:

http://www.mansfieldfdn.org/pubs/pub_pdfs/wen0105_chinaurban.pdf

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WordIQ.com (undated) Sustainable development [online] Available from: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Sustainable_development

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Zhao Bing & Liu jinpeng (2010) Research on Pushing Effect of Urbanization on China Western Investment. International Journal of Economics and Finance Vol.2 No.1 pp.182-185 [online] Available from: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/viewFile/4961/4120

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