Is There Political Peril in Letting China’s Cities Grow? China’s Vision for a ‘New’ Urbanization

May 9, 2013, 10:05 PM

Is There Political Peril in Letting China’s Cities Grow?

Chinese leaders since Mao Zedong have been wary of letting China’s largest cities reach megacity proportion. The usual reason cited is the fear of turning Beijing, Shanghai and other such cities into Latin American-style slums. But Ohio State University political scientist Jeremy Wallace says there may be another reason: regime survival. In a study of authoritarian regimes between 1946 and 2004 (pdf), he finds that “regimes with capital cities that dominate the urban landscape fail nearly four years sooner and face 60% greater death rates.”Specifically, for 237 nondemocratic regimes he studied with densely packed cities, the average duration was 8.6 years and the annual regime “death rate” was 9.2%. The 198 authoritarian regimes with low levels of urban concentration lasted, on average, 12.4 years and had an average annual death rate of 5.6%.

So do China’s leaders have a lot to worry about as migrants pour into the country’s cities?

Yes and no.

“I tend to come down on the stability side in China, because the nature of China’s megacities is that they are filled with the winners of the reform era,” he writes in an email exchange. Megacities in other developing countries are usually full of slums, which in a political sense are “areas where the regime does not exert full control,” he says.

The reason megacities are so dangerous politically, Mr. Wallace argues, is because they bring together masses of people and make it easier for them to organize and protest.

“Having a preponderance of the urban population reside in a few large cities, especially the capital, represents a mixed blessing: increasing the risk of turmoil along with (the) economic development” that comes from urbanization, Mr. Wallace writes in his paper.

Mr. Wallace notes that China has used its hukou household registration system to keep migration controlled. Rural migrants without the proper registration have a tough time getting social benefits or decent education for their children, making it hard for them to settle permanently in bigger cities.

Though the hukou system has long been criticized for being heartless and stunting economic growth, Mr. Wallace says he doesn’t see a “dramatic reform of hukou taking place anytime soon.” Rather, he expects gradual change.

“I don’t think the regime is explicitly considering a Tiananmen-like event,” he says in the email, referring to the 1989 student protests in Beijing that led to the declaration of martial law and a bloody crackdown. “But I do think that leaders in cities at the center worry about urban unemployment harming stability in ways that could undermine growth and ultimately the regime.”

May 9, 2013, 6:30 PM

China’s Vision for a ‘New’ Urbanization

China watchers are all abuzz about urbanization, which is supposed to be a focus of reform. But what does the term mean? After all, China has been urbanizing for 30 years, which has meant building roads, subways, ports — and relying more and more on infrastructure spending, which seems to have less and less payoff these days.

The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s state planning agency, is due to produce a report later this year laying out a path for a new kind of urbanization.

Li Tie, director general of the NDRC’s China Center for Urban Development, said the report involves a “new model of city development,” which would include three main parts:

First, there would be a focus on “low carbon” development — meaning trying to assure Chinese cities ease their horrendous pollution.

Second, would be reform of the household registration, or hukou, system. For smaller cities the system would be “totally liberalized,” Mr. Li said. He didn’t lay out his thoughts fully, but seemed to suggest that all residents would enjoy the same rights and benefits regardless of where they were born. For larger cities, migrants would get “resident cards” which assured them “improved treatment” and access to social services.

Third, China would look to increase “clustering” in big cities. Mr. Li didn’t explain what he meant by that, but in urban planning speak, clustering usually means trying to develop industries or specialties in a city or group of cities. That’s a way to build on the intellectual frisson of urban life, where new ideas can spawn new industries.

Those proposals address some of the most vexing problems with life in China’s cities: pollution, widening social inequality and lack of innovation. They also suggest that China’s leaders are committed to making urbanization into something more than another building spree. But changes would be costly and could require China’s central government to take a much more active role in overseeing—and paying for—urban growth than it has in the past. Whether China’s new leaders are ready to take such steps will become clear over the next year or two.