The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences issued a report on the quality of China’s urbanization in different cities. It is a meaningful report because it pioneers a framework to judge the quality of urbanization and reminds the Chinese government that quality is more important than speed in China’s urbanization, says an article in 21st Century Business Herald. Excerpts:

By the end of 2012, China’s urbanization rate was about 52 percent. But more than 200 million migrant workers, who are counted as permanent urban residents, do not have welfare services and identities like urban residents do. So it is meaningless for the Chinese government to pursue a higher urbanization rate while blind to the quality of urbanization.

The CASS report proposes more focus be paid to the life experiences of individual citizens. Yet the report does not point out the right driving force for healthy urbanization. In fact, the Chinese government should not rely heavily on large-scale low-quality investment in infrastructure construction.

More funds should be diverted to promising industries that can provide more stable jobs to attract quality laborers and promote improved quality of labor.

Some government investment in urbanization increases debt. Borrowing money to invest creates a false prosperity. Transforming the focus of urbanization from a focus on rate to one of quality is actually in line with the transformation of the overall national economic structure.