The Theoretical Study Of Contemporary Chinese Urbanization (1979-2005)

Urbanization generally means the process of people centralizing toward and moving into urban areas and their outskirts. This process has combined with industrialization tightly since the industrial revolution begun to change the world where more and more countries have moved from agricultural economies into industrialized economy with the booming of cities. From then on, urbanization is also thought as the spatial agglomeration and differentiation of human's economic activities, which is triggered by industrialization. Its growth directly depends on the industrialized level and the economic structure of certain country or region. Based on this point, this dissertation focuses on analyzing and summarizing China's urbanization theories, exploring their underlying logics as well as finding out the evolving process of current China's urbanization theories from the angle of History of Economic Thought.In this dissertation, the author classifies current China's urbanization theories into three types: the first is China's indigenous theories; the second is Chinese scholars' reviews on western theories; the last is the original researches using western theories for reference to explain China's status quo, which are the localization of western traditional theories. What's more, the author tries to probe deeply into the applicability of the western theories for China as well as further to explore the differentiae and what cause the differentiae between China's theories and their western counterparts.Preliminary summarization has been made in chapter 1, primarily summarizing China's and western theories and drawing the conclusion. Since China's research began from 1979, the author limits the research scope of this dissertation as the period of from 1979 to now. One point worth of attention is the classification of historical phases within the whole period. Based on the adjustment of national policies, the years of 1980, 1990 and 2000 become respectively starting point of different phases. Because each phase has inheritance and correlation with each other, the author classifies the period roughly into three phases: the first phase is from 1979 to the end of 1980's, the second is from the end of 1980's to the end of 1990's, and the last is from the end of 1990's to 2005. Furthermore, the author gives the review to current China's theories and puts forward four methodology problems unresolved.Chapter 2 elucidates the four problems one by one and gives out the framework and key tone. The author puts forward the standard of classification of urbanizationtheories, probes into new research methods and establishes the framework of the dissertation by defining the connotation of urbanization here.Chapter 3 treats Mr Wu Youren's paper of "About China's Socialistic Urbanization" as the beginning of China's theoretic researches. Although the research in that period is primary, the distinct viewpoints highlighted by Fei Xiaotong's "Small Town" theory gain great development among drastic debates and become the mainstream at that time. The booming of China's research results from not only the transformation of academic atmosphere but also from the inflow of western theories. In this initial phase, scholars mostly introduce these theories into China and give some reviews without applying them into the practice of China's urbanization. China's original theories dominate in this phase.Chapter 4 has the greatest length among all the parts, not only because it covers the long period of from the end of 1980's and the beginning of 1990's to the end of 1990's but also urbanization theories has developed into very huge system in this phase, and the research framework of transition period has gradually come into being. The theories of this phase have two breakthroughs: one is summarization of China's urbanization practice including comparison of China's theories with western ones based on summarization of different phases and characteristics of urbanization process since the foundation of China. This is a great step forward that research develops from simple introduction to summarization and evaluation. The second is the depth of research. China's scholars broaden horizon via the introduction of many wrester theories and find that western traditional theories cannot explain and resolve China's urbanization problems well. So they create new theories applicable to China's status quo through using western theories' relevant concepts and methods as reference. We can call it the process of localization of western theories or combination of China's and western theories. During this phase, China's scholars mostly use western theories for reference to summarize China's urbanization development and the choices of developing paths, and broaden the category of urbanization driving forces. Compared with the previous phase, the great advancement is the absorbing western theories into China's unique context, which shows the transformation of China's urbanization research.Chapter 5 develops the research into four aspects: rethinking the urbanization practice based on previous research, expanding the research of driving force system, reconstructing the path of urbanization and evaluating the institution of urbanization.The summarization of practice is not limited in the retrospect of development of urbanization but based on the macro background of China's economic development. One point we should pay attention to is economic context beginning to be the standards for evaluating urbanization. The research on driving force system tends to deal with all sides of this theme. Compared to the previous research, the recent research about commonness (basic force) fills up the blank of relevant theoretical system. And with China's involvement into economic globalization deeper and deeper after entering WTO, scholars begin to try reconstructing research framework of extraneous driving force system of China's urbanization to accommodate the new development tendency. As to the choice of urbanization path, scholars don't limit themselves in the discussion of previous theories any more, and they step out of the framework of previous dispute about path decision, and begin to put forward new viewpoint, "megalopolis", ( urban agglomeration) based on foreign urbanization experience and practice of China's development. Cheeringly, the research of this phase has begun to come into the aspect of institution consideration.Chapter 6 is the end part of the whole dissertation. Not only does it review the theoretical framework of the whole dissertation, but this chapter rescans the evolving process of China's urbanization theories as well. Based above, the key issue is extracted out that China's urbanization is actually a series of contradictions originating from the concession and selection made by the institutional power regarding the differences of cost and benefit between urbanization and industrialization in the unique Chinese context of urban-rural dual structure with low productivity and large population. This issue exactly distinguishes China's urbanization and its theories from the western. As the conclusion, the historical thread of thoughts about China's urbanization is clearly drawn out by the author. Initially, under the special social-economic background, China's development has to reply on the low cost industrialization or rural industrialization. Based on the accumulation of prior industrialization, China comes into the new phase of no-necessaries consumption and turns to encourage the urbanization. From now on, the investment activities in the urbanization have been the new engine of the growth of China's economy. However, in the anticipated future, the high cost and the economic structure change involved in the urbanization will influence the sustainability of China's economic growth. Therefore, urbanization in China has come into another key period. At the end, this chapter summarized the conclusions of this dissertation.