As a possible way to reorient China’s economy and boost its sustainable growth, the government is engaging in a kind of populist urbanization, which is really focused more on “small city-ization” rather than traditional “urbanization.”
This policy is meant to focus on developing emerging cities rather than expanding large existing ones. The policy is being implemented by bulldozing farms and villages and moving the people into newly constructed cities with high-rise residential towers.
By 2025, China is expected to have over 200 cities with populations of more than one million people.
What lies behind this new strategy? According to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, city residents spend more than rural residents on services such as schools, healthcare, leisure and financial advice. This spending would help boost the country’s services sector and reduce the economy’s dependence on exports. Premier Li also cited the reality that the services sector is “capable of absorbing the largest number of new employees and is an important driving force behind scientific and technological innovation.” In a nutshell, the plan is to bring rural citizens to where their children can obtain better educations, health care and training that will make the future Chinese labor force more skilled and productive, able to compete on an international scale rather than to be limited to competing only based on low cost labor and manufacturing capacity.200 Chinese cities, each with more than a million people: got coal?
US coal industry is watching and acting.
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