An Inquiry into China’s Urbanization Quality in the Era of Urban Society

In 2011, China entered into an era of urban society with a majority of urban population. It is a miracle in human history and a momentous change in Chinese society. Under this context, this paper establishes an index system to measure the quality of urbanization, including the rate of household registered population and deviation of urbanization based on the three aspects of urban development, residents’ life and urban–rural integration and the five dimensions of population, economy, space, society and urban–rural coordination. The entropy method and inter-provincial panel data in 2011–2017 are used to conduct empirical analysis on the quality of urbanization of China and its evolution in this period. It is found that although urbanization quality has been improved significantly and regional disparities have been alleviated slightly after entering the urban society, the overall pattern has not changed. Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai as well as the eastern provinces including Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong are among the top, while the northeastern region continues to decline and the western inland provinces are still left behind. The most pressing task is to promote high-quality urbanization. With people as the core and “market” as the support, efforts should be made to improve social construction and urban–rural coordination, narrow the gap between the rate of household registered population and the rate of permanent urban population, promote the new urbanization focusing on quality and finally, build a high-quality modern urban society.