The Road To Urbanization And Central Towns Development In China

Urbanization is a common way to develop economic societies cross the world, and it is a necessary economic phenomena coming with industrialization. Urbanization can promote the qualitative change of city-countryside distributions and resident lifestyles. Meanwhile, it is an important approach for economic structure optimization and industrial structure upgrade.Up to date, developed countries have experienced urbanization. However, in China urbanization is comparatively slower because of special economic conditions and historical factors. The urbanization rate of China is only 41.8 per cent by 2004, which is not only far lower than developed countries with 70-80 per cent, but also lower than the average world level-47 per cent.Based on the current situation of economic development in China, low urbanization is becoming a major bottleneck blocking the constant development of economics and living standard. So it is necessary for China to promote energetically the urbanization step by step.By analyzing the historical evolution and current situation of urbanization in China, on the basis of elaborating its basic patterns, general rules, major experiences and related theories, the thesis attempts to illustrate that it is a strategic choice to follow the way of urbanization with Chinese feature, and it is also the emphasis of urbanization to develop energetically small towns while insisting on the harmonic development of big, middle and small cities.Furthermore, the thesis expounds the key position of central towns to develop small towns, and indicates that giving a top priority to developing central towns is the certain choice of developing our current small towns because central towns have better locations with more power and they have attraction to countryside and small towns nearby.Finally, by analyzing current developing situation in China, the thesis proposes the ideas and details of the solutions and steps to develop central towns.