For the first time in history China’s urban population will exceed its rural population at the beginning of 2012, according to the 2011 Blue Book on China’s Society.“It will be a significant turning point for China, changing a thousand-year-old majority agrarian and rural population structure,” said the blue book, which was released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) last December. It attributed the change to rapid urbanization.
According to results of the latest nationwide population census, there were 665 million urban residents on the Chinese mainland, or 49.68 percent of the total national population, on November 1, 2010.
“The reversal not only indicates a simple alteration in the percentage of the urban population, but also implies profound changes in Chinese people’s lifestyles, employment, consumption and even values, which will have profound impacts on the economy and society as a whole,” said Li Peilin, Director of the Institute of Sociology of the CASS.
Along with the change of the proportion of urban and rural residents, economists believe the emergence of a fundamentally urban society will inject tremendous vitality into the Chinese economy.
Urbanization has long been considered an engine for progress, because it creates new demands and these demands propel the economy forward.
However, the extent of China’s urbaniza- tion is still open to question. China has counted migrants staying six months or more as part of the resident population of a city since 2005. But physically living and working in a city does not necessarily allow rural migrants to get urban hukou (permanent residence registration) under the current regime in China.
According to the blue book, there are more than 240 million rural migrants in Chinese cities.
The majority of these rural migrants work as temporary construction workers and in the service industry. But they are effectively excluded from the social security and welfare guarantees that are only available to people with urban hukou, and have to pay much more for their children’s schooling in cities.

“This may lead to social conflicts and increase social instability,” said Li Tie, Director of the China Center for Urban Development.
In order to tackle these challenges, many scholars have called on the government to adopt new policies and social management approaches to help rural migrants assimilate into cities.
Rapid economic growth and better job opportunities in cities are the main factors behind growth in the country’s urbanization rate, which has risen from about 18 percent in 1978 to around 50 percent today.
“China is facing considerable pressure regarding employment as a huge rural population moves into urban areas,” said Cai Zhizhou, Deputy Director of the China Center for National Accounting and Economic Growth at Peking University. “The government needs to expand employment for the new labor force, particularly migrant workers.”
Although migrant workers have seen their incomes grow in recent years, more than 60 percent of them live apart from their family members who remain in the countryside.
“Even migrant workers who have settled family members in urban areas may live in different cities than their families,” said Li Wei, a researcher with the Institute of Sociology of the CASS.
In addition to a growing gap with original urban residents in terms of living standards, migrant workers must also confront problems of alienation within large cities.
A survey conducted by the CASS between July and November last year showed that even among migrants who had lived in cities for more than five years, 47.52 percent said they still felt not fully accepted in their cities of residence.
According to the survey, 13 percent of original urban residents said they were reluctant to make friends with rural migrants and 29 percent were unwilling to let their children marry anyone without an urban hukou.
“The urbanization rate makes no sense as a measure or development if migrant workers are not treated as equal citizens,” said Li Changping, a researcher with the China Rural Development Research Center of Hebei University.
Lu Xueyi, Director of the China Rural Sociology Research Institute and a contributor to the CASS blue book, believes that the main barrier to the assimilation of migrants is the outdated urban management system currently employed by local governments.
“One sub-district covered an average of 4,600 residents in 1978, but the figure has jumped to around 21 times that and now covers about 96,000 residents,” Lu said, noting that city administration systems need to be greatly improved.
He also called on the government to intensify efforts to protect the rights and interests of migrant workers.
As migrants often live away from their families and are not accorded the same rights as urban residents they are vulnerable to exploitation by employers.
According to the CASS survey, only 30 percent of people with rural hukou but living and working in cities have pension funds, compared with 63 percent of those with urban hukou.
It also showed that only 37.9 percent of migrant workers had fixed work contracts. For original urban residents, the figure was 75 percent.
In the first nine months of 2011, arbitration and mediation institutions across China handled 933,000 labor disputes involving migrant workers, up 55.3 percent from 2010’s total, said the blue book.
“More importantly, the current social insurance for migrant workers can hardly meet the demand, and it is hindering efficient social management,” Lu said.
Some cities have already started to reform the rigid hukou system. They have worked out sensible approaches to manage and assimilate their new urban residents.