China’s Urbanization Strategy and Policy During the 14th Five-Year Plan Period

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s urbanization construction has obtained remarkable achievements. Its urbanization continues to advance rapidly. The gap between different regions is constantly narrowed. City clusters have become the strategic core areas to promote urbanization and economic development. Currently, the key issue in China’s urbanization is not about the level or speed, but the quality. Tough challenges faced by China in its urbanization include: (1) granting permanent urban residency to people originally from rural areas (citizenization) is severely lagging-behind; (2) the key links in integrated urban–rural development system and mechanism are blocked and (3) the resources and environment costs in advancing urbanization are excessively high, etc. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China’s urbanization will continue to advance rapidly, but the speed will further slow down. By 2025, China’s urbanization rate is expected to reach about 65.5%, among which the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions will reach 73.0%, 63.1%, 61.2% and 66.7%, respectively. To this end, China’s urbanization should be people-centered and led by high-quality integrated urban and rural development; thus, the urbanization quality can be improved in an all-round way. It should be a path of high-quality urbanization with Chinese characteristics featuring moderate and reasonable advancing speed, effectively improved quality in citizenization, balanced and orderly urbanization pattern, deeply integrated urban and rural development, and green, healthy and sustainable development. In terms of specific measures, the government should strengthen the leading, demonstrating and radiating role of central cities and promote the formation of four-tier central city system, namely, the global central cities, national central cities, regional central cities and local central cities; plan and build 34 high-end metropolitan areas at the national level, making them the core areas of advancing new-type urbanization in the new era; accelerate the process of establishing cities, encourage the transformation of large towns into cities, and strictly control the transformation of counties into urban districts; implement differentiated policies for expanding, stable and shrinking cities and towns, respectively; connect the channels between homesteads exiting the market and collective construction land for commercial use entering the market.