Growth of Chinese cities 'inexorable'
Almost 19 million people live in Shanghai
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Thursday, 27, Aug 2009 02:05
By inthenews.co.uk staff.
The rate of Chinese urbanisation will see the equivalent of the entire population of the US move to cities within 20 years, the government has said.
Officials have predicted the country's urban population will swell by 300 million by 2030.
Ministry of housing urban-rural development officials told the China Daily that the move to cities for hundreds of millions of rural-dwelling Chinese would require one trillion yuan (£90 billion) of investment in sanitation and civic infrastructure.
"Such a big urban population will result in huge market demand," said Xu Zhongwei, deputy policy director at the ministry.
Three decades ago the rate of urbanisation in China was 17 per cent, now standing at 45 per cent and predicted to rise year-on-year by one per cent.
With 600 million of China's 1.3 billion inhabitants already living in cities, this rate would create 300 million new city-dwellers over the next 15 to 20 years.
Mr Xu said the Beijing government was confident it could resist the rise of slums seen in countries in south Asia and South America witnessing similar mass urbanisation.
"This is an incredible speed and I am quite proud that we didn't see a huge increase of slums in the cities during the process," he added.