Sustain Sci (2008) 3:155–167
DOI 10.1007/s11625-007-0040-y
OVERVIEW ARTICLE
Managing the rural–urban transformation in East Asia
in the 21st century
T. G. McGee
Received: 22 September 2007 / Accepted: 18 December 2007 / Published online: 19 February 2008
Ó Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science and Springer 2008
Abstract This article explores the special features of the
rural–urban transformation in East Asia in the last 30 years
within the broader context of the development strategies of
Asian governments. Despite an ongoing commitment to the
rhetoric of concern with rural development, food security
and the alleviation of rural poverty, these policies have
emphasised the important role of urbanisation as the prime
process influencing economic growth. This is supported by
the economic argument that the economies of scale, the
creation of mass urban markets and the higher productivity
that occur in urban places make them crucial to development. This paper argues that this approach creates a false
dichotomy between rural and urban areas, whereas development should aim to increase the linkages between rural
and urban areas aimed at producing societal transformations rather than separate rural and urban transitions. The
paper then explores the empirical evidence of rural–urban
transitions in East Asia with a more detailed case study of
China, which is considered to be a crucial example because
of the size of its population, the special conditions of
market socialism and its institutional capacity to manage
the rural–urban transformation. The final section focusses
on the importance of developing spatial sensitivity to the
management of the rural–urban transformation in the 21st
century. Old divisions between rural and urban sectors
must be replaced by planning that integrates urban and
rural activities so that they adopt sustainable management
This paper was presented to an international symposium on urban/
regional planning in Asia held in Yokohama, Japan, on 15–17 August
2007.
strategies which utilise concepts of eco-systems in which
rural and urban activities are linked, so as to create sustainable urban regions, cities and societies.
Keywords East Asia Urbanisation Rural–urban linkages Spatial planning Desakota Eco-systems
Introduction
In the last 30 years, researchers and policy makers in Asia’s
developing countries have favoured development strategies
that have placed increased emphasis on encouraging
urbanisation and structural shifts in their national economies
to industrial and service sector activities (World Bank 1993;
White 1998). This has occurred despite an ongoing commitment of many Asian governments to the rhetoric of rural
development, food security and concerns with persistent
rural poverty. The reasons for this focus are numerous, but
among them, the conventional economic wisdom that
investment in industry and services creates higher returns
than agriculture is a powerful mantra. There is also a strong
belief that urbanisation is an inevitable part of the process of
creating a modern state; indeed, the economies of scale, the
creation of mass markets and the higher productivity that
occur in urban areas make cities, it is argued, absolutely
crucial to the process of development (Lampard 1965). The
consequences of this approach are only too obvious, particularly in the rapidly industrialising countries of East Asia1
1
T. G. McGee (&)
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
e-mail: tmcgee@interchange.ubc.ca
The definitions of East Asia vary considerably. The geographical
definition which I adopt in this paper is that of Pacific Asia, which
includes China, Japan, the two Koreas, Taiwan (China) and all of the
countries of Southeast Asia.
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characterised by rapid urbanisation, increased industrial
production and the increasing importance of the urban-based
service sector. Of course, these developments have been
heightened by the growing integration of the global economy
and the restructuring of the economies of the developed
world that are part of the much debated process of globalisation (Olds et al. 1999; McGee and Watters 1997).
The results of these development strategies in the more
developed East Asian economies have been the decline in
the proportion of the employed population in agriculture;
the depopulation of rural areas, a sharp reduction in the
number of family farms and a restructuring of agriculture
with growing emphasis on capital intensity, off-farm
employment, the employment of migrant farm labour and
food imports. Another result is an increase in rural–urban
income disparities that accentuates out-migration from the
rural areas. At the same time, increased technological
inputs into agriculture (the green revolution) from the
1960s onwards have provided the impetuous for a surge in
agricultural productivity (particularly in grains) until the
1990s, such that many East Asian countries provided food
for the expanding urban labour forces often at state-subsidised prices, which helped keep urban costs of living and
wages lower. This enabled these East Asian countries to be
more competitive in attracting international investment in
the industry and services (Rigg 2001).
This brief, and no doubt oversimplified, summary of the
prevailing developmental wisdom of East Asian counties is
presented as a way of framing the five central issues that I
wish to address in this paper.
The first is the failure of policy makers and researchers
to understand that the urbanisation–industrialisation transition that they see as an inevitable driving force of the
modernisation of their states is, in fact, a transformation of
both the rural and urban dimensions of their countries in
which the linkages between these two sectors are central to
the goals of successful development. To put it starkly, it is
not possible to preserve agriculture in the way that it has
developed historically or divert urban growth into smaller
urban centres in rural areas because the rural–urban
transformation is occurring in both rural and urban areas
and is inextricably linked. Discussions of the distinction
between transitions and transformation and the inadequacy
of the rural–urban division and the importance of rural–
urban linkages are presented in the next section, entitled
Transitions or transformations in the development process.
Second, the ideas of transitions or transformations in the
development process are used to explore the rural–urban
transformation in Asia, East Asia and China in order to
show how important the contribution of agriculture and its
relationship with the urban sector has been to these countries in the success of industrialisation and urbanisation. It
will be obvious from this analysis that China is something
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of a special case, not only because of its ongoing restructuring of the previously planned economy, but also because
of its size, regional diversity and the hybridity of the rural–
urban transformation, which are discussed in the section
titled China: a special case of rural–urban transformation.
In Managing the rural–urban transformation: the
importance of spatiality, we turn to the issue of the need to
understand the spatial dimensions of the urbanisation process as an essential component in the understanding of the
urbanisation process in East Asia. Finally, in Managing the
rural–urban transition in Asia, I argued that the need to
develop new management policies for the rural–urban
transformation is crucial to the task of creating sustainable
societies. In particular, I argue for the need to develop
management policies that recognise the spatial and ecosystems’ consequences of rural–urban transformation that
are focussed on the urban margins of East Asian megaurban regions in which the major tensions of the rural–
urban transformation are most evident.
Transitions or transformations in the development
process
Most development theory assumes that developing societies are passing through some kind of transition from
underdevelopment to development (Rostow 1960; Porter
1990). The pace and change of this process may vary
greatly between countries and global sub-regions, but it is a
global trend. This idea is encapsulated with the idea of
transition from tradition to modernity—the demographic
transition which argues that societies pass through stages of
low population growth to high population growth and into
a phase of slow population growth, and the environmental
transition that suggests that, as societies become more
developed, they become more sensitive to issues of sustainability in situations where environmental problems are
abound. Finally, there is the urbanisation transition that
predicts an inevitable shift from low levels of urbanisation
to high levels of urbanisation as countries become more
developed.
These theories of transition are based on three assumptions. First is that these transitions, while they may vary
between countries, are inevitable; countries must go
through these transitions to become developed. A second
assumption is that these transitions are linear and proceed
through a series of stages, which, although they may vary
in their length between countries, are necessary prerequisites for development. Third, transition theory adopts a
model of the rural–urban transition that assumes a classic
model of rural–urban dichotomy. Basic to this conception
is the idea of a division between rural and urban that is
reflected in the spatial and administrative structures of
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societies (Champion and Hugo 2004; Montgomery et al.
2003). Thus, transition theory assumes a spatial reordering
of countries as an important part of the process of
development.
It is central to the argument of this paper that transition
theory is flawed as a model to investigate the development
in East Asia today. On the face of it, this may seem to be a
surprising assertion, as, patently, many of the developed
countries of East Asia, Japan, the Republic of Korea,
Taiwan (China) and Malaysia appear to have experienced
transitions broadly conforming to transition theory. But I
would argue (following Marcotullio and Lee 2003) that the
conditions of the transition they have experienced are very
different for the pace of the transition that is occurring is at
a very much faster rate than that of early transitions.
Marcotullio and Lee have argued, with respect to the
environmental transition, that the ‘‘... unique feature of the
present era is the compression of the time frame in which
the transitions are occurring’’ (Marcotullio and Lee 2003 p.
331; Marcotullio 2003). This is clearly illustrated in Fig. 1,
which shows the changes in the levels of urbanisation
between England and Wales, Mexico and China. As is
clear from the figure, China will take only half the time to
reach levels of urbanisation compared to that of the other
two (100 years) and, of course, the number of people
involved in this shift to higher urban levels will be much
larger. Marcotullio and Lee further argue that transitions
are now overlapping ‘‘in a telescoping of the transition
process in a much shorter time-frame than earlier.’’
(Marcotullio and Lee 2003 p. 331; Marcotullio 2003).
I find this concept of the telescoping of transitions very
helpful in interrogating the concept of the rural–urban
dichotomy that is central to transition theory. Fundamental
to the idea of telescoping transitions (also called ‘‘time–
space telescoping’’) is the idea that they are being driven by
accelerated transactional flows of people, commodities,
capital and information between, and within, countries.
Most obviously, the flows of capital and information can
Fig. 1 Telescoping transition. The increase in urbanisation levels of
England and Wales, Mexico and China
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occur almost instantaneously (unless there are institutional
or technological restraints), while the movement of people
and commodities have become much faster over the last
50 years. The international components of this transactional revolution are generally referred to as part of a new
era of globalisation in which foreign investment encouraged by national states is an important component.
The different character of the transactional revolution
places much more emphasis on the flows of people, commodities, information and capital within national space
economies in which rural–urban flows are only one part of
many flows within countries that include regional transactions and urban-to-urban transaction flows between the
transaction nodes of nations (see Fig. 2). Thus, development is seen as occurring in a dynamic sense as a process
of the transformation of national economic space in which
interaction and linkage is a more accurate reflection of
reality than the idea that rural and urban areas are undergoing somehow spatially separated transitions. Thus, there
is a strong argument for revising the concept of the rural–
urban transition as a transformational process that views
developmental changes as occurring in national space in
which rural and urban are becoming increasingly intermeshed in a common transformational process. In other
words, we no longer need to view the process through a
historical lens that does not reflect contemporary reality. In
contemporary East Asia, the rural–urban transformation is
fundamentally driven by a network of linkages that provides a dynamic spatial frame of flows of people,
Fig. 2 The globalisation transactional space
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commodities, information and capital. Of course, in large
nations such as China or India, this interaction may be
more difficult in geographically isolated areas, but, even
here, the new transactions in information offers possibilities for increased interaction.
This means the acceptance of this concept of transformation as involving developmental change that flows
through networks that ignore the rural and urban divisions
of political and economic space. The recognition of these
‘‘transcending networks’’ enables the researcher to reassess
assumptions about rural activities (note, not rural areas)
that they are playing a negative role in development that
have been discussed earlier in this paper. Thus, for example, the contribution of agriculture to development can be
analysed not as something that only originates in rural
areas, but takes into account urban and peri-urban food
production. For example, Gale estimates that 10% of the
gross value of agricultural output (GVAO) in China in
1997 was produced in urban areas (Gale 2000). I will
endeavour to show how this approach can provide a more
realistic assessment of the contribution of agriculture to
development in East Asia and China in the next two parts
of the paper.
Transforming rural and urban space in Asia,
1980–2000
In this section, I want to look at two levels of the transformation of rural and urban space. First, at the global
level, evaluating the role of Asia’s contribution to the
global agricultural production and the global urbanisation
process. Secondly, more specifically at the experience of
the Asian countries that have nearly completed the transformation from rural to urban societies in East Asia,
particularly, Japan, Korea and Taiwan (China).
The global picture of agricultural output labour
and urbanisation: Asia’s contribution2
An analysis of the state of global agricultural production
and agricultural labour trends over the last 30 years
indicates that the value of agricultural output in constant
USD almost doubled in that period (International Labor
Organization 2005). During these years, the labour input
(as measured by the number of economically active
people in agriculture) increased from around 898 million
2
This section adopts the UN Population Division’s definition of Asia
that includes East Asia, South and Central Asia, South East Asia and
Western Asia. This is a much more geographically expanded
definition of Asia than that generally used.
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to almost 1.3 billion persons. What is most significant
about these patterns of increase is the major growth of the
global share that has occurred in Asia, which has grown
from 28% to 43% of global agricultural production and
73% to 79% of the global labour share in these 30 years.
In the same time period, the global level of urbanisation
increased from 36.8% to 47.2% and that of Asia from
23.4% to 37.5%. The UN Population Division estimates
suggest that, in the next 30 years, this urbanisation trend
will continue at a global level, reaching 60%, while Asia
will increase to 51% by 2030. Since Asia contained an
estimated 60% of the global population in 2000, this
means that, in the next 30 years, some 1.3 billion people
will have to be absorbed into urban areas, while the
population resident in rural areas remains virtually at the
same numerical level of an estimated 2.2 billion (Population Division UNO 2002).
The numerical dimensions of these demographic trends
are unique in the world experience of urbanisation. For
example, in Western Europe, it was estimated that, in the
19th century, the increase of urban levels to 40% involved
a shift of only about 50 million people, whereas in Asia,
that number is an estimated 1.3 billion. Of course, at the
sub-regional and national level within Asia, this demographic picture is dominated by the large developing Asian
countries in excess of 100 million in population that
include China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia,
which will be joined by the Philippines and Vietnam in the
next 30 years. By 2030, these large countries (in excess of
100 million people) will make up almost 80% of Asia’s
population and 59% of the global population. These
numerical dimensions, thus, present a basic challenge to
the management of the rural–urban transformation.
The transformed newly industrialised countries: Japan,
Korea and Taiwan (China)
As we indicated earlier in this section, the group of East
Asian countries that are made up of Japan, the Republic
of Korea and Taiwan (China) appear to be models for the
transformative path from rural to urban society on which
China and other Asian countries are now embarked.
Together with Singapore and Hong Kong (China), which
as city–states are not discussed here, these countries have
all experienced rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in
the period since 1960 that have led to a rapid rise in
national income. The patterns of urbanisation in selected
other East Asian countries is also shown for comparative
purposes but (with the exception of China) are not discussed here (see Table 1). While these changes in Japan,
Korea and Taiwan (China) have been associated with
substantial increases in agricultural productivity, none of
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Table 1 Changes in the distribution of gross domestic product (GDP) and urbanisation levels, 1960–1980–2000
Rural–urban trajectory
Agriculture
1960
Industry
1980
2000
Services
1960
1980
2000
1960
1980
2000
Type I
Taiwan (China)
28
9
3
29
46
35
43
49
62
Japan
13
4
1
45
43
32
42
53
66
Republic of Korea
37
16
5
20
39
44
43
45
51
Malaysia
36
23
9
18
30
51
46
47
40
Thailand
Indonesia
40
54
22
26
9
16
19
14
28
39
42
46
41
32
50
35
49
38
Philippines
26
22
16
28
36
32
46
42
52
33
48
57
12
13
10
55
39
33
39
33
15
38
47
46
23
20
39
Type II
Type III
Myanmar
Type IV
China
Figures for Singapore and Hongkong (SAR, China) are not included because their statuses were 100% urban. Figures for Laos, Cambodia and
Vietnam were also not included
Sources: World Bank (various years) World Development Report, Washington; Taiwan (China) data from the Taiwan Statistical Data Book
(various years)
Urbanisation trajectories: Type I: highly urbanised (above 70%); Type II: mid-level Urbanised (40–60%); Type III: low level of Urbanisation
(below 30%); Type IV: China, special case level of 36%
Figures for the proportion of GDP in agriculture, industry and services are given as percentages
these societies have been able to develop a strong rural
sector that has held rural populations. Each of these
countries has experienced rural depopulation and the
aging of the population that remain in rural areas, and
each of these countries has become increasingly dependent upon food imports. All three of these countries share
certain common features of high densities, a common
historical experience as being part of the Japanese sphere
of influence up to the end of the Second World War, land
reform and technological innovation post-1946 that has
led to a rapid growth in agricultural productivity. Most
researchers argue that this initial surge of agricultural
production, along with foreign aid and investment, made a
significant contribution to the growth of non-agricultural
sectors and the transportation infrastructure. These
countries also share common experience of rapid industrialisation, agricultural change, high education levels,
‘‘state guidance’’ and ‘‘control’’ in a market economy
setting.
From the 1960s onwards, all of these three countries
focussed on developing a combination of export-orientated and import-substitution industry that was focussed
on the corridors that ran between the major urban centres,
Tokyo–Osaka, Seoul–Pusan and Taipei–Kaosiung, in
which structural change was centred and most of these
countries’ populations were living by 2000. These urbanised corridors were closely associated with the main
railways systems that linked Taipei (and its port of
Keelung) with Kaosiung in the south of the island that
had begun in 1898. In a similar manner, the Japanese, by
1928, had established a system of railways and bridges
linking Pusan, Seoul and Pyongyang with Sinuiju on the
Manchurian border and their own railway systems linking
Tokyo with Osaka. In the post-Second World war period,
as the independent governments began to develop
economically, they accelerated investment in the transportation infrastructure, which, together with the growth
of export-orientated industry located both in free export
zones and industrial estates, accelerated the concentration
of population in the central urban nodes of Taipei–Kaohsiung and Seoul–Pusan. Thus, while in 1960 the
population of Seoul and Pusan was 3.6 million or 14% of
the national population, by 1975, these cities accounted
for 27% of the national population. In most recent years,
both Korea and Taiwan (China) have completed fast
Shinkansen-type rail linkages that further facilitate the
emergence of urbanised corridors similar to the Tokyo–
Osaka corridor. Relating these developments to our
broader discussions of the first section of this paper, it is
clear that the Asian newly-industrialising countries (NICs)
have been very successful not only in structural transformation, but also in breaking down the ‘‘friction of
distance’’ and reducing transportation costs. In order to
accomplish this, the governments had to appropriate and
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dominate their national territory and adopt various spatial
practices, such as the allocation of public capital and
loans to transportation and communications, which were
central to the growth of urbanisation and the decline of
the rural population. While some researchers like to
attribute this success to the role of ‘‘unfettered capitalism,’’
this is surely an oversimplification. The transactional
environments of these NICs where goods, people and
commodities move very fast is very much the consequence of the governments’ desires to ‘‘annihilate’’ distance in their nations (McGee and Lin 1993).
China: a special case of rural–urban transformation
At present, China appears to be exhibiting many of the
same features of the rural–urban transformation that
occurred in the case of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Since
1978, it has been experiencing increasing agricultural
productivity, increased rural–urban migration and growing
industrialisation and urbanisation focussed on the coastal
zone and the large extended metropolitan regions of
Shenyang–Dalian, Beijing–Tianjin, Shanghai– Hangzhou–
Nanjing and Hong Kong–Guangzhou–Macao. For example, it was estimated in 1999 that some 45% of GDP, 33%
of industrial output, 75% of utilised foreign direct investment and 75% of China’s exports were produced in these
four extended metropolitan regions that contained 10% of
the population in 2000 (McGee et al. 2007). This pattern of
development has led to increasing disparities in income
between the predominantly urban provinces of the coastal
zones and the poorer provinces of Western and Central
China that are becoming a major national policy concern
that is addressed in the 11th Five Year Plan (Ewing 2006).
Thus, on the face of it, it would seem that China is following the development trajectory of Japan, Korea and
Taiwan (China).
For a number of reasons, the prospect that China may
be duplicating the developmental trajectories of the
transformed East Asian NICs raises concerns among
many groups (international agencies, non-governmental
organisations [NGOs] etc.) that this route may create
serious problems of environmental sustainability not only
nationally, but also globally (Brown et al. 1995). Writers
from these groups point out that China, with a GDP in
2002 of USD 1,272 billion, was the world’s sixth largest
economy at current exchange rates but second in purchasing power parity (PPP), is becoming a key player in
the global economy. This advance has been accompanied
by a rapid growth in trade and investment. Second, they
point out that China has the world’s largest population
with 1.3 billion heads, which is 21% of the world’s
total.
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Despite a very high growth rate of GDP in the period
between 1991 and 2003, which has averaged 9.0%, the
GDP per capita in 2002 was still USD 1,000, which qualifies China as a lower middle income country. This means
that, as China moves towards higher levels of GDP per
capita income and becomes more urbanised, the demands
on the environment will increase substantially. Third, given
China’s commitment to the development of auto-centred
transport systems, including private cars, motorbikes,
trucks and various forms of public transportation, such as
buses and mini-buses, this will place increasing pressure on
land and energy as China continues to urbanise. A major
feature of these auto-centred forms of transport is that they
demand increasing space for roads, parking and exchange
points. Thus, these systems include ‘‘... an extensive
material infrastructure of roadways, service and repair
facilities, storage space and an extensive social infrastructure of elaborate bureaucracies’’ (Freund and Martin
1999). The emphasis on the auto-centred city is also supported by a culture of ‘‘automobility’’ that is encouraged by
the car manufacturing industry, the desire of middle and
upper income class consumers to own cars and national
development strategies that foster the growth of a national
car industry, often in conjunction with international car
manufacturers. Thus, these auto-centred systems encourage
the outward spread of urban-based activities (residence,
work and leisure), which are complimented by state policies of industrial decentralisation to urban margins and the
need for linkages to transport nodes, such as ports and
airports. Spatially, these forces are focussed on the urban
margins of Chinese cities and particularly in the coastal
zones of China, where some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land of China is located.
Although China’s land area is huge, cultivated land
accounts for only 130 million hectares, or 13.5% of China’s land surface, most of it located in the eastern region,
the region of the most rapid urbanisation and the greatest
loss of good agricultural land. The population is also
unevenly distributed, with almost 90% of the population
living on less than 40% of the land area. This creates great
demands on the available resources, such as water, land
and energy, which are needed as inputs for the rapidly
urbanising society. As a result, China faces many challenges in creating a sustainable and livable society over the
next few decades.
While much attention has been paid to China’s strong
economic performance over the last two decades, much of
this success has been attributed to the growth of industries,
services and the expansion of urban markets. At the same
time, the agricultural sector has also been an important
contributor to this growth, despite a fall in its contribution
to the GDP from 28% in 1990 to 15% in 2003. The agriculture sector still provided about 40% of employment in
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2003, which has fallen by 15% from 1990, despite overall
increases in productivity per hectare from 1980. Thus,
between 1990 and 2003, the GVAO almost doubled. This
increase was attributable to three main policy decisions.
First, the dismantling of the collective production systems
and the introduction of the household responsibility production system (HPRS), in which farmers leased the land
from the collective. Second, the rapid growth of Township
and Village Enterprises from the early 1980s has greatly
increased the opportunities for off-farm employment
opportunities and growing markets for agricultural products. Third, the national policy of the mid-1990s to
encourage the growth of urban centres, as a principle
strategy for modernisation. The success of the policies have
led to a shift in consumer demand for food products from
cereals to livestock and fish and a transformation in the
composition of agricultural production. While cereal crops
accounted for 65% of the total value of primary production
in 1990, their share fell to 50% in 2003. During the same
period, the share of livestock production increased from
26% to 32% and fisheries from 5% to 14% (OECD 2005,
2005; Gao and Chi 1997; Carter et al. 1996). While these
developments occurred throughout China, the major impact
was in the eastern coastal zone, which experienced the
most rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. Thus, it is
clear that, as the urban sector has grown, agriculture has
also been undergoing a transformation and that the two
sectors are inextricably linked in the process of
development.
However, this does not mean that this agricultural
transformation is without its challenges. First, agriculture is
still on an overwhelmingly small scale. In 2005, there were
about 200 million farm households, with an average land
allocation of 0.56 Ha . This means that, while the productivity per unit of land is high, the output per worker is
low and, despite growing rural incomes, the disparity
between rural and urban incomes has been increasing.
While China had been somewhat successful in limiting the
outflows of rural migrants to urban areas, particularly in the
1980s, these flows have begun to accelerate in the 1990s as
movement restrictions have been eased or not enforced.
There will be still a major challenge of managing the shift
of almost 500 million Chinese from rural areas into urban
areas in the next 30 years. While the supply of inputs (e.g.
fertiliser) and the marketing of agricultural products have
begun to diversify as State Trading Enterprises become less
important, the farmers still have trouble accessing the
credit that will enable them to change their production
systems to improve the quality of their product, which are
demanded by food processors and retail chains that are
growing in the urban areas. Undoubtedly, growing urban
demand will make this a necessity in the next ten years as
the consumer markets of the urban areas grow.
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Agriculture is also faced with other challenges that are a
consequence of this rural–urban nexus. It is estimated that
some 20% of agricultural land has been lost to urban
expansion over the last 20 years and, despite its size, there
is limited possibilities of the expansion of cultivated land
(Lin and Ho 2005). The growing use of intensive chemicaluse farming systems is beginning to affect water systems.
At the same time, the by-products of urban and industrial
growth are leading to increased environmental problems
that affect the agricultural production. These challenges
precipitate a careful consideration of the management of
the rural–urban transformation.
Central to the argument of this paper is the assertion that
China has at least six advantages in accomplishing this
rural–urban transformation. First, to adopt a well-known
argument, China is a late arriver in the development process and has, therefore, the opportunity to take advantage
of previous transformations and to look for positive
examples from other countries that are most suitable for its
local context. Second, China is experiencing the rural–
urban transformation at a unique period of globalisation,
which gives its government access to information and
technologies, such as geographic information systems
(GISs) that can be applied to the management of the rural–
urban transformation.
Third, China is able to engage the management of the
rural–urban transformation as a state project that is part of
what Scott has called ‘‘high modernist ideology.’’ He
defines this as a ‘‘version of self confidence about scientific
and technological progress, the expansion of production,
the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of
nature (including human nature) and above all the rationale
design of the social order commensurate with the scientific
understanding of natural laws’’ (Scott 1998). The language
of the 10th Five Year Plan captures this ideology splendidly (New Star Publishers 2001).
Fourth, this project of the rural–urban transformation is
being filtered through a series of administrative scales from
national to local that are increasingly characterised by
decentralisation and local control. This means that there is
much more opportunity for local involvement in the rural–
urban transformation.
Fifth, I would argue that, while economic decisions on
investment are an important part of this process, the rural–
urban transformation is primarily an institutionally driven
process and that China has been very successful in making
institutional adaptations in the post-reform period. For
example, the growth of urbanisation in China in the
last decade has been dominated by the state-led replacement of rural space by urban space. This is accomplished through the creation of provincial level municipalities (e.g. Chonqquing), the expansion of existing
municipalities (e.g. Guangzhou), the reclassification of
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counties to municipalities (e.g. Dongguan, Kunshan) and
the creation of new urban spaces (e.g. Shenzhen, Zhuhai)
and the amalgamation of townships. This process of the
reshaping of administrative space is, thus, extending the
spatial control of urban areas over former rural areas and
creates both opportunities and problems in the rural–urban
transition (Ma 2005; Chung and Lam 2004).
This process of the expansion of urban space has been
facilitated by the state separating land-use rights from landownership and the opening up of a new market track for the
conveyance of land-use rights to commercial users. Now,
all land transactions involve some form of leasing but not
the transfer of property rights and the periods of leases
have progressively extended. In urban areas, this meant
that land formerly occupied by state-operated enterprises
could be leased for commercial purposes. In rural areas,
land was defined as collectively owned and the leasing of
land was more complicated because, while the state was
attempting to limit the conversion of agricultural land in
rural areas to other purposes (primarily for reasons of food
security), it has allowed the institutional units of the rural
collective (villagers’ committees, village economic cooperative or township collective economic entities) to allocate
rural land for other uses subject to the approval of the Land
Bureau at the county level. Despite the many efforts of the
central government to slow down the rate of approvals,
they have continued apace, leading to an increasing use of
rural land for non-rural activities and, as the spread of
urban political power into these rural areas ensued, there
has been much social and economic discontent among the
rural population. This is further accentuated by state efforts
to rationalise land-use to avoid environmental problems
and create more livable societies that has led to a proliferation of industrial zones in the margins of the city cores.
These programmes are further promoted by the need to
increase the quality of production to conform to the regulatory environment that has to be set up as a consequence
of the admission to the WTO in 2001 (Lin and Ho 2005).
Sixth, despite the size of its population, China has been
able to successfully reduce its rate of population growth
because of its ‘‘one child policy’’ and, in addition, avoided
the surge of rural migrants to urban areas in the first decade
of the reform era though residence permits (hukou), thus,
preventing the growth of informal squatter settlements that
are a ubiquitous feature of urbanisation in other developing
countries. For a brief moment in history, it seemed that
China may have experienced a unique lag in rural–urban
migration at a time of increasing economic growth, but in
the decade of the 1990s, this rural–urban migration has
accelerated, although tending to locate primarily in the
peri-urban margins of the cities.
But these advantages must be set against the problems
that are created because of the relative imbalance in
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investment between the rural and urban areas. This is primarily explained by the rapidly integration of China into
the global economy. Scott and others have argued that the
present phase of globalisation is creating a new ‘‘social
grammar of space in which the whole edifice reposes upon
a geographical foundation that can be best described as a
mosaic of city regions constituting the economic motors of
the global economy’’ (Scott 2001). What we are describing
here is an intensely competitive system in which the megaurban regions of China, like those in other parts of the
world, are competing to capture some portion of these
transactions generated at both national and international
levels. Thus, there is increasing pressure upon governments
at both the national and city level to create an urban
environment that will increase the flow of transactions to
the mega-urban region. Olympic games, major attraction
sites such as Disneyland, new airports, convention centres,
multi-media corridors, urban renewal and industrial estates
in peri-urban areas are all parts of packages that are
designed to make urban regions more attractive. In some of
the transformed NICs, such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan
(China), these developments have the capacity to generate
countervailing forces within the city regions, in which civil
society movements begin to pressure for more investment
in livable regions than globalising cities. This creates an
ongoing tension between growth-orientated policies and
those directed towards creating more livable urban regions
(Ma and Wu 2005).
This tension begins to assume a spatial dimension in the
fiscal imbalance in the investment between the central city
cores and its suburbs of the mega-urban regions are being
transformed to make them more attractive to the forces of
globalisation involving major the investment of public and
private capital in the enticing built environment of globalisation. For example, at a national meeting held in 2005,
Wang Guangtao, Minister of Construction, criticised these
strategies, claiming that 183 cities had vowed to build
themselves into international metropolises with so-called
‘‘show-off projects,’’ such as open city squares, luxury
office buildings and airports. One writer has reported that
‘‘most of urban China has been built in the past 25 years at
a rate of 150 million square metres per year, often on large
projects. This rate of urban expansion is unprecedented...’’.
This surge of urbanisation is generating a huge demand for
capital. One estimate of the annual costs of Chinese
urbanisation is 300–500 billion yuan (USD 37 billion),
which is roughly 2–4% of the Chinese GDP in 2004
(Sustainable Development Research Group 2005). This
growth in capital demand has generated a huge amount of
borrowing. A report by the State Development Corporation
in 2002 estimated that the total debt borrowed by local
government equals one trillion yuan. On the other hand, the
urban margins and rural areas are being under-supplied
Sustain Sci (2008) 3:155–167
with services and public and private investment is smaller,
with much less investment.
A second spatially focussed issue that affects the rural–
urban transformation is the growing demand of central city
cores and their suburbs for resources, such as water, land,
building materials, labour, recreation space and waste disposal sites in the urban margins and rural areas, which have
serious impact upon agriculture in these areas. As we have
already pointed out, the more positive side of this urban
impact is that the growing markets of cities are increasing
demand for higher value food products, such as animals,
fish and fruit. Farmers in these peri-urban areas are rapidly
changing to the production of these commodities.
A final issue in rural–urban relations relates to the
ongoing migration from rural to urban areas. Since this has
been the focus of much academic and policy attention, I will
not deal with the process in detail, except to point out that
the actual movement of migrants is still very much the tip of
an iceberg and will accelerate in the next two decades.
Social problems may well be accentuated, particularly if
urban poverty increases as vulnerability to global trade
cycles increases. Therefore, there will be increasing pressure on all levels of the government to increase investment
in social overhead capital, such as education, health and
housing in urban areas. Experience in other Asian developing countries does not suggest that investment in rural
areas will stem this exodus (Douglass 2001).
Thus, there is an ongoing tension in the rural–urban
transformation process that involves careful and innovative
management. In much of this section, we have argued that
China, because of its unique historical, geographical and
institutional features, is developing a form of hybrid
response to its rural–urban transformation that combines
endogenous and international elements. The Chinese
approach to the rural–urban transformation is a process of
experimentation, constantly changing and adapting to the
realities of the immediate situation at all scales, from
international to local. Nee (1992) captures the essence of
this approach in the following quote:
‘‘Rather than conceive the market transition as a
linear progression to capitalism, we may analyze the
departures from state socialism as likely to produce
hybrid market economies that reflect the position of
the institutional centricity of their parent institutional
form.’’
Managing the rural–urban transformation:
the importance of spatiality
This preceding discussion of the rural–urban transformation in East Asia and China raises many policy challenges
163
concerning the most effective way to manage the rural–
urban transformation. There are three policy assumptions
that underlie my discussion here. First, there is a need to
recognise that the rural–urban transformation process in the
developing countries of Asia (including China) poses
serious challenges to the eco-systems of these countries. In
this discussion, we refer only to the local features of the
eco-systems, but it must also be recognised that the
urbanisation process creates broader global environmental
problems, such as global warming. Second, there is a need
to accept the fact that policy intervention is a necessary
prerequisite for a sustainable rural–urban transformation.
Third, there is a need to think of the rural–urban transformation as one in which the networks of rural–urban
relations are being changed as much as the places that are
thought to be rural and urban.
The implications of accepting the fact that rural–urban
transformation has crucial impacts on eco-systems means
that there must be further clarification of this concept.
While there are many definitions of eco-systems, we
believe the one that best suits the rural–urban transformation is idea of the eco-system that involves the dynamic
interaction between people and their environment. Of
course, this interaction is mediated by the social, political
and economic institutions of which the people are part, as
well as changes in the environment, e.g. climate change
etc. Part of this eco-system provides inputs, water etc. that
are necessary for well-being. But these inputs are always
being modified by people and institutions of which they are
part, so that relations in eco-systems are in a constant state
of flux, with urban places and non-urban places functioning
as partial eco-systems in which the urban places are generally supported by biophysical processes that occur
elsewhere (Rees 1992). But even in dominantly agricultural
rural areas, for example, the demand for fertiliser to
increase productivity may affect both source areas and the
in-situ eco-systems. The crucial part of this approach is that
it recognises the fact that the rural–urban transformation is
part of an integrated eco-system that is being spatially
impacted differentially within the system.
In most of Asia, national space has been seen as conventionally divided into three regions (De Koninck 2003).
First, the agricultural core regions, which exist in every
country, for example, the lower Yangzi in China, Thailand’s central plain and the island of Java. These are all
characterised by high densities, intense agricultural activities and are the location of major mega-urban regions,
such as the Shanghai–Nanjing–Hanzhou extended metropolitan region, the Bangkok metropolitan region and the
Jakarta–Bandung urban corridor. Historically, these core
regions have been major centres for the production of basic
staples, such as rice, but they are now shifting to non-cereal
products. In larger countries, such as India and China, there
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164
are also many core regions. Second, there are frontier
regions that are given over to more extensive agriculture
activities, such as livestock farming etc. These areas are
ecologically diverse, ranging from coastal locations to
mountainous areas. Finally, here are the spatial zones on
the peri-urban fringes of the city cores characterised by the
most intense interaction between urban and rural processes,
which consist of the urban periphery, which I have labelled
elsewhere as ‘‘desakota.’’ As urbanisation proceeds, it will
be a major force in changing the spatial structure of these
regions in Asian countries (McGee 1991).
It is important, therefore, that policies do not assume
that rural or urban spaces are homogeneous, but they
should recognise that they are integrated spaces. Within
Asia, there is ample evidence that both rural and urban
areas are experiencing different development trajectories
shaped by their regional contexts. Thus, with respect to
China, Dong (2004) suggests the emergence of four main
types of rural area, each of which will involve different
policy responses. (1) High amenity rural areas of cultural
importance and scenic beauty to proliferate as urban consumers demand increases. These can already be seen
emerging in Chengmai in Thailand and in the Yunnan
Province in China. (2) Sparsely populated areas where
population density is low, incomes are low and limited
services are available because of isolated locations. (3)
High-poverty rural areas, which exist in pockets more
predominantly in interior provinces. It is clear that the 11th
Five Year Plan had identified these latter two rural areas as
the focus of their public investment over the next five
years. (4) Finally, there are the zones of rural–urban
interface that exists around many of the larger cities. They
present distinctive challenges that, in the short-term, are
most problematic for developing sustainable societies in
nations such as China.
There is a large and growing literature detailing the
problems of these peri-urban regions in the Asian context.
Part of the literature focusses on the measurement and
delineation of these peri-urban zones. The accompanying
figures illustrate some hypothetical models of these areas
(see Figs. 3 and 4) (Marton 2000; Zhou 1991).
There is also a strong emphasis upon the high density of
many of these regions, the historical evolution of intense
agricultural systems being heavily reliant upon efficient
water delivery systems which are subject to rapid change as
a result of urban expansion and demands upon the
resources of the peri-urban regions that are set within the
framework of the emergence of large mega-urban regions.
Finally, there is recognition that these peri-urban zones,
particularly in countries such as China, where the city cores
already have very high densities, will be the location of
most urban-orientated growth, absorbing up to 80% of
urban increase over the next few decades (Webster et al.
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Sustain Sci (2008) 3:155–167
Fig. 3 Spatial configuration of a hypothetical Asian country (ca.
2000)
Fig. 4 Spatial configuration of an Asian mega-urban region (ca.
2000)
2003). The policy solutions for such regions are not easy,
for they are often politically fragmented and there are subregional variations in the eco-systems that create great
Sustain Sci (2008) 3:155–167
165
Fig. 5 Model of decision
processes in the peri-urban
and desakota zones
difficulty for policy makers. These developments create a
complex managerial environment in which a myriad of
polyarchic decision-making at the local level come into
conflict with the transformative elements of higher levels
of government, business etc., resulting in a decisional
congestion (see Fig. 5).
Managing the rural–urban transition in Asia
The rethinking of the methods of governance and management that this spatial understanding of urbanisation
demands is very challenging. Broadly, any institutional
response must be at the level of the extended metropolitan
region (EMR), and this involves a three-fold commitment.
First, at the level of the EMR, there must be a two-fold
interpretation of governance as incorporating the exercise
of political will and power within the EMR. Second, the
management of these EMRs must be directed to ensuring
livability and sustainability. Such a vision does not exclude
the possibility of city region, public–private partnerships
and government–civil society coalitions being formed.
Indeed, the administrative spread of China’s cities that we
have referred to earlier offers the institutional possibilities
to make flexible and innovative management decisions.
This, of course, requires the continuation of the regional
visioning of EMR space that we see operating between
Shenyang and its surrounding industrial cities in Liaonang
or the coalitions of mayors in the lower Yangzi river valley. In this respect, Brenner’s carefully articulated review
of metropolitan regionalism in the USA and Europe has
some relevance. He describes metropolitan regionalism as
‘‘including all strategies to establish institutions, policies or
governance mechanisms at a geographical scale which
approximates that of existing socio-economic interdependencies within an urban agglomeration’’ (Brenner 1999).
Third, there must be a commitment to the preservation
of the eco-systems of which these EMRs are part. While it
is somewhat unconventional, I would argue that the coexistence of agriculture, industry and other urban activities
in a form of a mixed-use landscape offers the most viable
option for the preservation of eco-systems within the EMR
and producing a livable and sustainable city region. The
conventional approach to achieve co-existence between
agriculture and non-agriculture is regulatory, based on the
zoning of land-use. In the United Kingdom, the concept of
a green belt surrounding the urban core became an
important part of planning practice, and this has transmuted
into the use of ‘‘green spaces’’ that are now seen as a basic
necessity to the quality of life of city regions in many
developed countries. In this respect, the experience of
Japan may provide a model that would have resonance in
China and other parts of East Asia. Various reviews of
Japanese planning practice emphasise the fact that ‘‘...
planners in Japan have attempted to emphasise the positive
aspects of agricultural land within urbanizing areas’’
(Nakai 1988), emphasising the role that agriculture plays
not only in the provision of food, but also in preserving the
eco-system. This suggests the development of new ideas
for Japanese EMRs involving the creation of rural–urban
mixed settlements, which has been labelled konju-ku in
Japan. Such policy initiatives could be implemented at
various spatial levels, for example, at the level of the
watershed, in which many biophysical processes interact,
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or at the institutional level of the metropolitan region. But
for both levels, the idea of a fusion between urban and rural
environments and the acceptance of mixed land use is
fundamental to planning strategies.
Conclusion
In a considerable part of East Asia today, characterised by
a surging economy, rapid urbanisation and a lagging
agricultural sector, the kinds of policy prescriptions that
have been laid out in this paper may seem overwhelmingly
utopian, but given world trends such as global climate
change and increasing energy prices, these policies will be
necessary to produce sustainable societies in the 21st
century, with changing land use, increasing environmental
problems, changes in the built environment and population
change in these rapidly changing urban areas.
To conclude, the key to managing the rural–urban
transformation in East Asia does not involve the blind
acceptance of the transition models of urbanisation from
the ‘‘west.’’ East Asian countries should be developing
their own response to the rural–urban transformation; that
is, attempting to manage the interaction between global,
national and local forces that drive the transformation using
endogenous ‘‘adaptability’’ and adopting a form of
‘‘hybridity’’ in managing the rural–urban transformation
process that we elaborated on earlier.
Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank the anonymous
reviewers for their excellent suggestions that have been incorporated
into the revisions of this paper.
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