People-Centered New Urbanization

China has made remarkable progress in urbanization since Reform and Opening up,with urbanization rate hitting 57.35% in 2016,averaging an annual growth of 1.04%.Urbanization has become a powerful engine for China's economic growth and national competence.Cities and towns become incubators for knowledge,technology,culture and innovation.China's urbanization develops and spreads in a cascaded pattern stretching from the East to the Middle and to the West.The "two horizontal & three vertical intersecting economic belts" have taken shape.The 3 city clusters in the east have grown into platforms for international competition and cooperation.The recently-launched 3 Initiatives,namely the Belt and Road Initiative,Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Integration Initiative and the Yangtze River Economic Zone,will lead China's urbanization to a new level.China's urbanization used to be material-centered,characterized by sprawl of cities,excessive reliance on "land dividends" and "population dividends",extensive exploit of resources and environment,and disregard for the rights of farmers and migrant workers.China's urbanization also registers an unbalanced development.First,cities,especially large cities drain resources from the countryside.As a result,big cities are inflating,and the countryside is deflated and marginalized.Second,cities are distributed and developing in an unbalanced manner,causing immense gap between the east,the middle and the west.Third,there exist vast differences in welfare and development opportunities between city residents,farmers and migrant workers.The disparity between regions,between the cities and countryside,between cities,and between urban and rural residents compromises urbanization,hindering the integration of cities and the countryside.Nowadays,the world economy is recovering slowly.China's economy steps into the "new normal" after 30 years of rapid growth.To adapt to the new normal,nurturing new kinetic energy,and to promote the supply side of structural reform will continue to be essential tasks for China.Economic development,energy resources and ecological environment pose unprecedented pressure.The immoderate expansion of urbanization driven by high-input,high-consumption,and high-emission industrialization are unsustainable,low-cost urbanization supported by differentiated welfare and public service is unsustainable.China has to skip over middle-income trap while its demographic dividend is disappearing as economy enters into the new normal.Urbanization is experiencing profound changes,shifting from speed-oriented to quality-oriented,from people-centered."People-centered" means development for the people,by the people,and the fruits of development being shared by the people.It means catering for people's pursuit of a better life,constantly safeguarding the fundamental interests of the people,promoting common prosperity and securing social justice.The core of urbanization is the urbanization of the people.In other words,urbanization is the means to realize human development and modernization while human development and modernization are the basis and goal of urbanization.People-centered new urbanization has three connotations: development for the people,from material urbanization to human urbanization;development by the people as the dominant force;fruits of development are shared by the people,from semi-urbanization to full urbanization.The new urbanization has five features: the overall economic,political,cultural,social,and ecological progress;integrated rural and urban development;integrating the development of industrialization,IT application,urbanization and agricultural modernization;sustainable development;and technology and innovation driven development.This paper constructs a push-pull model for China's new urbanization.It hypothesizes that the four sectors of urbanization--the central government,local governments,enterprises and farmers--are rational man,with different decision-making status;urbanization and migration are the outcome of decision-making and selection of each sector.Pulling and pushing forces are possessed by both the cities and the countryside and vary.Broadly speaking,the pulling and pushing forces between regions and different types of cities are changing,too.Farmers,enterprises,the local government and the central government will make their respective decisions in order to maximize their utility,and ultimately shape the road-map of China's urbanization.This paper constructs an evaluation system for people-centered urbanization,and evaluates the urbanization quality in 31 provinces(autonomous regions and municipalities)from 2004 to 2014.The evaluation system consists of seven primary indicators(population,employment,housing and living standards,education,medication,social security and ecology)and 18 secondary indicators.According to the evaluation,non-agricultural employment and education continue to exert strong influence on the quality of urbanization while economic indicators such as per capita GDP show negative correlation.This shows that urban economic development and cannot automatically improve the livelihood of all city residents;the fruits of development cannot be automatically shared among people.The pushing and pulling factors between urban and rural areas and across regions are changing and tend to be more balanced,as evidenced by the narrowing gaps between provinces,flattening spatial distribution and equilibrium in terms of urbanization quality.It can possibly be concluded that migration and urbanization trends are gradually influenced by such factors as economic development,regional policies,industry transfer between regions and narrowing income gap.Regions and provinces differ in their focus: developed regions and provinces should make efforts in enhancing the urbanization quality and solving urban residency for migrant workers and their families while middle and west regions should take industrial development,creation of jobs,improving public services and building polynet city regions as their top priorities.People-centered new urbanization should be achieved by following the important guidelines: employment and housing in cities are two major areas to make breakthroughs;equalized basic public services should be taken as primary task;polynet city region should be adopted as main form for China's urbanization;urbanization should be planned based on ecological capacity into account.China should adopt a more coordinated,fairer,more harmonious,more environment-friendly and more efficient path in urbanization,in order to achieve its ultimate goals of holistic development of its people,integration of urban and rural areas,and coordinated regional development.