Urbanization,Ayoiding The Middie-Income Trap And Enlightenment To China

In2010, gross national income per capita of China exceeded＄4,000and China officially became an "upper middle-income" country. Based on international experience, the "middle-income trap" is a potential trap in the development of every country. If dealt with improperly, the country is likely to fall into the "middle-income trap", leading to long-term economic and social stagnant. The "urbanization trap "is one aspect of the" middle-income trap ". Therefore, to take a deep research of the relationship between urbanization and economy from the perspective of urbanization is of great theoretical and practical significance for China to jump out of the "middle-income trap".This paper reviews the domestic and foreign theory of urbanization and middle-income trap, and uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The paper selects Japan and South Korea as the cases that jump out of the middle-income trap, and selects Brazil, Chile and Malaysia as the cases that fall into the middle-income trap, to take an analysis of their urbanization during the period that they were among the upper middle-income countries. After analysis, it is found that Brazil, Chile and Malaysia have three points in common:lack of coordination between industrialization and urbanization; lack of macro-control over urbanization; unreasonable rural land policies. Japan and South Korea also have three in common: coordination of industrialization and urbanization; reasonable control over the size of the cities; sound agricultural policies.After taking a research in urbanization of China by using Hollis B. Chenery " s general pattern as well as by international comparison, a conclusion comes that urbanization and economy are coordinated to each other in China if all migrant workers living in cities turn into true citizens. But China has to be alert to the rapid pace of urbanization and take a reasonable scale of the cities, as well as focusing on agricultural modernization and transformation and upgrading of industrial structure, increasing investment in human capital to promote high-quality urbanization and economic development and accelerating the reform of the household registration system.The innovation of this article possibly lies in two ways. First is the new perspective. This paper takes a quantitative study of urbanization in the period that cases were among the upper middle-income countries from three perspectives of level, speed and structure of urbanization. Second is the new conclusion. The study shows that, the urbanization plays different roles in economy while it is at different development stages. Urbanization and economy are significantly correlated to each other at the early stage being a middle-income country. Then urbanization matures gradually and its influence on economy weakens in close to becoming a high-income country. China has to be aware of urbanization speed.