Regional Inequality In Urbanization:

East And West Metropolises And Small Towns

 Introduction:
• Along with rapid economic growth in China, there has
been a sharp rise in regional inequality in recent
decades. The primary regional gap manifests itself in
the eastern coastal provinces in China that have
experienced rapid growth for a long time, while the
western regions have lagged.
• Since the new millennium, the central government has
initiated several national policies to promote balanced
economic development. It started several preferential
policies to stimulate economic growth in the western
regions, such as the Western Development Strategy.
However, these policies only favored a few central
cities, and most small towns and rural areas are still
impoverished

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 Introduction:
• When the People's Republic of China was founded
in 1949, there were only 132 cities with an urban
population of 27.4 million. In 1978, there were 193
cities in total, with a mean annual growth rate of
1.32%. At the same time, the urban population
increased from 27 million to 80 million with a
mean annual growth rate of about 4%. 
• After the Economic Reform and Opening Policy of
1978, China experienced rapid urbanization with
the number of cities reaching a total of 467 in
1990, and 652 in 2008. But this growth was by no
means evenly distributed across the three large
geographical regions of China. In 1949, more than
half of the total number of cities was located on the
eastern coast, while 38% were located in the
central region, and only 10% were located in the
western region. 3
Taking Xinjiang as a case, investigated
regional inequality in Xinjiang since the
1990s. The results show that the
interregional inequality became more
prominent, while the overall regional
disparities among counties and cities have
experienced an inverted U-shape path and
have been mainly caused by the inequality
of the intra-north part of the province.
Counties with high economic
development levels were mainly located
in northern Xinjiang and had a high
probability of further moving economic
levels.

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 Influence of Urbanization
• Small towns in small countries are significantly smaller than the small towns in large countries. Many
small countries do not have a megacity, and nearly all large countries have many large cities of various
sizes as well as one or several megacities.
• It is difficult to make accurate international comparisons of the proportion of nations’ population living
in small urban centers defined by their population size because each nation has its own criteria for
determining when a settlement is large enough to be classified as urban.
• Each country defines its own criteria to determine whether a settlement is classified as urban based on
population size, administrative status or governance, concentration of non-agricultural employment
base, and density of population.
• Urban settlements in the PRC were administratively defined as statutory cities and statutory towns until
2006. Since, they have evolved to a five-tier structure based on their administrative status as central,
provincial, prefectural, county, city, and township (or community in cities). This limited criteria for
classification makes comparisons difficult.
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 Regional effects in an area
Eastern China
• •
Economically developed regions are mainly
concentrated in the eastern coastal areas.
• Eastern China has better infrastructure, developed
transportation, good climatic conditions and many
employment opportunities, many Chinese in the west
will settle in the east.
• Even today, the city of Shenzhen sprouted up faster than
any major city of its size has ever grown.
• Shenzhen is the third busiest shipping port in the world,
Shanghai is number one.
• It is natural for populations to congregate on the coast
of the ocean, for the purpose of maritime economy as
well!
• people live where the water is. On the coast or along a
major lake or river. a low area without mountains near
the coast would be Eastern China.
Western China
Western part of China is the Gobi desert and there
aren't going to be many population centers in that part
of the country.
• People need water for life, and we also need food,
which requires, you guessed it, water.
• the natural environment in these regions is inferior,
with mountainous terrain, lousy climate, and lack of
resources such as water, sunshine, and fertile soil.
• Second, ethnic difference is a significant social feature
in western China, where poverty coincides with high
ethnic diversity.
• Third, accessibility in western China is relatively poor,
and many peripheral areas have difficulties in
contacting the outside world, which has seriously
6 restricted the local economic development.
 Conclusion

Eastern regions have experienced the fastest growth rate. From 1978 to 2008, the number of cities in the
eastern region grew from 69 to 271 with an annual growth rate of 4.67%. At the same time, the number of
cities in the central regions increased from 84 to 256, while those in the western region increased from 40 to
125. Nevertheless, the annual growth rate for these regions was lower than the national average.

Out of the new cities that were formed during this period, 44.1% were located in the eastern region, and only 18.3%
were located in the western region. In 2008, 49.6% of the total urban population was concentrated in the eastern region
and the western region accounted for only 17.7% of the population. The urbanization rate was 53.3% for the eastern
region, compared to 37.2% for the western region.
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 Thank
you!
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