Governing urbanization and the New Urbanization Plan in China

作者：Bingqin Li, Chunlai Chen, Biliang Hu · 发表于：Environment and Urbanization · 年份：2016 · DOI：10.1177/0956247816647345 · 被引用次数：96 · 研究领域：China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance、Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences、Local Government Finance and Decentralization

This paper explains the reasons behind the growing social tension and increased number of conflicts in China after a good performance in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. In this paper, we map out the issues with old urbanization (1978–2014) and the problems unsolved by past policy, and analyse whether the new policy changes introduced by the New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) may help to deal with those problems. We argue that the tensions that evolve into conflicts are often a result of unaddressed social anxiety. Using money to purchase social stability can only be part of the solution. There need to be more serious attempts to improve governance, which involve: improving multi-level governance and inter-regional coordination, enhancing policy transparency and rule by law, adjusting the level of redistribution, and integrating rural and urban community governance structures.