Exploration And Retrospect On The Path Of Urbanization With Chinese Characteristics

China’s urbanization has gone through many twists and turnsin the past sixty years, and it contributes a lot to promotingindustrialization, improving international competitiveness as well asimproving people’s living standards. Since the beginning of21th century,China is in the phase of accelerating urbanization, and urbanization isplaying a vital role in pushing China’s economy forward. However, weshould also clearly see that China’s urbanization is still at the early stage,exhibits unbalanced developments in different regions and lags behindChina’s industrialization level. What is far worse, China’s urbanizationis built on extensive growth mode with high pollution and high energyconsumption. The issues of lands, the issues of agriculture, rural areasand farmers, the issues of dual economic structure, and the issues ofpopulation aging all bring great challenges for China’s urbanizationdevelopment. We should not copy foreign models in urbanization andcan’t continue to take the traditional path of urbanization, but only createa path of urbanization by combination with our national conditions. Inthis paper, we make some exploration and retrospect on China’surbanization, elaborating the reason why we adhere to the path ofurbanization with Chinese characteristics, reviewing different periods ofurbanization process we have experienced and different policies adopted by the different generation leaders of central government since thefoundation of PRC in1949, analyzing the problems that exist in theprocess of urbanization, and giving some specific policy recommendationbased on China ’s national conditions. We explore a path of urbanizationin which coexist China’s national conditions and modern civilization,urban civilization with rural development, harmonious development allover the country.