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It was common throughout the 1980s, to talk about there being two Chinas: one rural and the other urban, and whatever was said about one, would not apply to the other. The geographical cleavage and ensuing social distinction arose out of the party-state decision to provide its urban population with better food rationing, housing, and medical facilities. According to Kate Hannan (1998:60), "these subsidies account for 39 percent of urban workers' income, with housing accounting for 18 percent of the 39 percent." Favorably subsidized and isolated from the countryside, urbanities slowly forgot there was once a constant movement between the countryside and the city. In time, China's urbanities became ashamed of the countryside and everything associated with it. Its farmers (now referred to as peasants) were considered second-class citizens. Peasants, situated outside the urban hierarchy, became China's unfortunate people. They were unfortunate to have been born at a time when the communist party institutionalized a household registration (or a passport) system that rigidly restricted people's ability to move to other locations. The death of Mao Zedong in 1979 resulted in the return to power of his long time rival Deng Xiaoping. Deng wanted to transform Chinese society away from Mao's policy of regionally balanced growth to a strategy of unbalanced regional growth (Yang 1997). Deng argued for a kind of "trickle down hypothesis" in which economic development would diffuse gradually from the center to the periphery (Yang 1997: 28). In the case of China, this meant from the economic powerhouse coastal region to the underdeveloped interior. Today, scholars continue to discuss the "two Chinas. " However, the distinction no longer refers to the rural/urban divide as much as the new economic and social cleavages that separate the coastal regions from the interior region (Kahn and Yardley 2004; You 1999).
Deng's policy of rapid industrialization and technological modernization required fewer subsistence farmers and more urbanized workers. To speed the transformation along, the party encouraged the creation of industrialized townships. This was accomplished in two ways. First, farmers were allowed to move to the city to work on a temporary basis for longer periods of time, and second, more townships would be built in China's hinterland. The new policy was successful. Between 1978 and 2003 it resulted in the number of small Chinese towns exploding from 2,176 to 20,312, while the number of cities increased from 190 to 663. To put the matter in perspective, in 1981 only 20% of China's population lived in cities; by 1993, it had grown to 43%; and, by 2000 it had expanded to nearly 48%. Today, China has 32 mega-cities of 1 million or more, 42 large cities 0.5 to 1 million, 173 medium cities 0.2 to 0.5 million, and 375 small cities less than 0.2 million (Wu 1994: 5). By 2010, it is estimated that the majority of Chinese will live in some kind of urbanized community. The biggest change is in the small city which grew at the fastest pace compared to the super metropolis which actually lost population over a similar time frame.
Greg Guldin (1992; 1997), with several other contributors, explored the shifting nature of the relationship between the rural and urban spheres. The researchers, working primarily in the Pearl River Delta region, were the first to report that villages were becoming more town-like, while regional towns were becoming more city-like. Given this shift in infrastructure, along with the mass migration into the city, "peasant China," Guldin points out, will quietly pass into "townized China. "
Guldin (1997) considers these new settlements to be more like towns than large villages because of the presence of an urban life-orientation. In addition, he found that, first, people living in the towns preferred to cremate the dead, and thereby ignored the traditional custom of burial. This suggests that they no longer believe in traditional cosmology which, with the exception of the Buddhists, considered cremation the primary means to destroy a person's soul. Second, migrant laborers now work full time and can no longer return to their natal homes to help with the harvesting. Third, clothing styles, especially among the town's youth, are similar to those found in big cities. Finally, the family organization is focused on the conjugal unit more than on the extended family (Yan 2003). This shift in outlook is important, suggesting that peasants are already assimilated into an urbanized society.
Urban Research in China: An Overview
Most urban research tends to be conducted in one of China's four extended metropolitan regions: Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta (Clarke 2002; Hayes 1993; Mathews and Lui 2001; Leung 1996; Leung and Chan 2003; Ikels 1996; Johnson 1994), Shanghai and the lower Yangtze region (Duckett 1998; Foster et al. 1998; Hertz 1997; Hook 1998b; Xu 2000; Wong et al. 2004), the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region (Dutton 1998; Hook 1998a; Sit 1995), and Chengdu Plain (Gates 2000; Stapleton 2000). The rich historical legacy of these regions, combined with their continued political and economic importance to China's national development, will insure that they remain the primary arenas from which to assess China's national development (Faure and Liu 2002; Skinner 1977). Over the last 20 years, excluding the urban geographers publications, more than 108 studies have been published on the Chinese city. More than 96, or 87% of these are based on research in one of the above four regions, with Shanghai and the lower Yangtze Valley continuing to receive the most attention. Clearly, most scholars working on "things urban" prefer either to work in the nation's capital or in one of China's former treaty ports.
The Metaphor and the City
Liu Xin reminds us that a city is the byproduct of regional and global interconnections that need to be explored in order to highlight the "new topographical features" of urban China. This request would be puzzling, however, to the earlier 20th century Chinese literati who, much like their western counterparts, entertained conflicting images of the city. One view, often referred to as the Beijing perspective, did not consider the city worthy of study at all. This perspective glorified rural life as an idyllic setting where people reflect simplicity and a purity of heart. Much like Simmel's perception of the 20th century European city, the city was regarded as a bleak settlement and the source...
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