GU Chao-Lin, CHEN Lu, DING Rui, LI Zhen, DAI Mei-Mei
Globalization, internationalization, communication and high-technology are restructuring the world. Analyses of urbanization in developing countries will boost a better understanding of the impact of current globalization trends on cities. The growing interconnection between places in the world has indeed resulted in more interaction between cities throughout the world and a fundamental change in the organization of urban and regional economies. This new trend of globalization has caused most important impact on the prospects of cities all over the world. China has entered WTO since 2001. The globalization process has some impacts on urban development in the costal areas and has restructured national urban system. This paper will focus on the national urbanization strategies, urban hierarch and rank by size distributions, restructuring of function of global urban system, new spatial structures and so on.Since the China's reform and opening up, Chinese urban systems have developed rapidly. During the period of the 11th Five-year Plan, China will take part in the process of economic globalization and take an important position in the international economy, so the construction of national urban system will be of vital significance. This paper demonstrates that the urbanization degree will arrive at around 70% in the next 30 to 40 years. By 2020, urbanization degree will arrive at around 52% and there will be more than 1000 cities to be built up as municipalities. With China entering WTO and jointing globalization, it's vital for China to construct international cities. During the years between 2005 and 2020, China will establish several global cities in order to participate in the process of economic globalization and hold an important position in the international economy. The Chinese urban system will foster Shanghai and Hong Kong as core cities of the global city-regions, Beijing as global city, and Shenzhen, Qingdao, Dalian etc. as international cities. Simultaneously, it's also important to construct such cities as Zhuhai, Manzhouli, Dongxing, Alashankou and Er/enhot in developing border trade and export bases. Besides, some hub cities are also the principal parts in reconstructing national urban system. The hub cities are mainly composed of four types of cities: central cities of the big region, regional central cities, provincial central cities, and local central cities.Choosing some urban agglomerations as developing bases, some large cities as network nodes and constituting the spatial structure to link with global urban system are also important. That is to form "Three Verticals and Two Horizontals" national urban system development axes and sub-regional urban system composed of three urban agglomerations, seven city clusters and seventeen urban growing regions. Especially the importance is the construction of megalopolis of the Changjiang(Yangtze) River Delta, Zhujiang(Pearl) River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin Region. Besides, the urban system development of western China is also concerned. Three provinces including Tibet, Ningxia and Qinghai need to be actively developed provincial and municipal cities and plannedly develop three or four central cities. Five provinces including Shaanxi, Gansu, Guizhou, Guangxi and Xinjiang need to adequately control the size of the primary cities, and actively develop sub-central cities. And the growth-pole and development-axis sustainable systems are to be completed.The main tasks of sustainable system by 2020 are as follows. (1) Construct high-speed railway and express railway, for example, to open Beijing-Shenyang express dedicated passenger line; to build Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway and new passenger line from Chengdu to Chongqing; to build electrified railways from Beijing to Zhengzhou, Wuhan to Guangzhou, Harbin to Dalian, Chongqing to Dazhou, Chengdu to Kunming and from Zhuzhou to Guiyang; to build international railway path from Kunming to Southeast Asia. (2) Extend national trunk railway networks. Complete railway networks of East China, extend largely railway networks of Middle China, basically form railway framework of western China. (3) Build "Five Verticals and Seven Horizontals" national trunk highway networks composed of high-level roads. (4) Construct high-speed transportation systems for rapid urbanization regions. For example, construct three-hour Traffic Circle of the Changjiang River Delta, traffic systems of Bohai-Rim Area and so on.
