China said yesterday the number of people living in cities exceeded the rural population for the first time, a historic shift that experts said would put a strain on society and the environment.
The change marks a turning point for China, which for centuries was a mainly agrarian nation, but has witnessed a huge population shift to cities during the past three decades as people seek to benefit from rapid economic growth.
Urban dwellers now represent 51.27 percent, or 690.8 million people, of China’s entire population of nearly 1.35 billion, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said.
In 1982, only one-in-five people lived in cities. By 1990, urban dwellers represented 26 percent of the total population, a figure that rose to 36 percent in 2000 and jumped faster during the next decade to 51.27 percent.
The bureau added that China had an additional 21 million people living in cities by the end of last year compared with a year earlier — more than the entire population of Sri Lanka — while the number of rural dwellers fell.
“Urbanization is an irreversible process and in the next 20 years, China’s urban population will reach 75 percent of the total population,” said Li Jianmin (李建民), head of the Institute of Population and Development Research at Nankai University. “This will have a huge impact on China’s environment and on social and economic development.”
A significant portion of those moving to cities are migrant workers, who have helped fuel China’s rapid growth.
A national census published in April last year counted more than 221 million migrants and a government report released months later predicted that more than 100 million farmers would move to cities by 2020.
However, migrants are often treated as second-class citizens in the towns or cities they live in because they are still registered as rural residents and have little or no social security.
“We’re already seeing some of the destabilizing aspects of [urbanization] because China’s political and administrative system hasn’t caught up with the economic and social reality,” China Labour Bulletin spokesman Geoffrey Crothall said.
He said many people still classified as rural residents now form major portions of the population in many cities throughout China.
ESCALATING TENSIONS: The US called for restraint and meaningful dialogue after Beijing threatened Taiwanese independence advocates with the death sentence The US on Monday condemned China’s “escalatory and destabilizing language and actions” toward Taiwan after Beijing last week announced new guidelines to punish supporters of Taiwanese independence. Asked about the guidelines, which included the death sentence for “diehard” independence advocates, US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said: “We strongly condemn the escalatory and destabilizing language and actions from PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials.” “We continue to urge restraint and no unilateral change to the status quo,” he said at the press briefing. The US urges China to “engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan,” Miller said, adding that “threats and legal
DEATH THREAT: A MAC official said that it has urged Beijing to avoid creating barriers that would impede exchanges across the Strait, but it continues to do so People should avoid unnecessary travel to China after Beijing issued 22 guidelines allowing its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death “Taiwan independence separatists,” the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday as it raised its travel alert for China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to “orange.” The guidelines published last week “severely threaten the personal safety of Taiwanese traveling to China, Hong Kong and Macau,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference in Taipei. “Following a comprehensive assessment, the government considers it necessary to elevate the travel alert to orange from yellow,” Liang said. Beijing has
WATER CONCERNS: The CWA encouraged people to conserve water, as fewer typhoons would bring less rain, and the plum rain season brought in only 60% of average rainfall About two to four typhoons are forecast to come close to Taiwan between now and November, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, as it also forecast that extreme heat would persist throughout the week, only dropping by 1°C after Friday. The number of typhoons is slightly lower than the average of three to five, reflecting a weakening El Nino weather pattern and the possibility of a La Nina pattern approaching, CWA Weather Forecast Center Director Chen Yi-liang (陳怡良) told a news conference in Taipei. While typically fewer typhoons develop under such conditions, their routes would be more likely to pass near
Taiwan and the US should invest in low-cost, long-range drones to be deployed en masse in the event of a Taiwan-China military conflict, a US think tank said in a recent report. In a report titled “Swarms over the Strait: Drone Warfare in a Future Fight to Defend Taiwan,” released on Thursday last week, Washington-based think tank the Center for a New American Security said a diversified fleet of drones could help stave off a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “The United States needs a diverse fleet of aerial drones that includes a mix of higher-end and cheaper systems,” the report said. That mix