Urbanization like China? Implementation mode, policy regime and sustainable transformation pathways

The explosive growth in China’s urban population has invited inevitable conflicts in the process of human-environmental interaction, which may render a new social-economic-ecological landscape in the post urbanization era. This chapter analyses the unique facts, policies, and implementation actions of China’s urbanization over the past two decades. First, we introduce the administrative structure of the urbanization policy system in China and discusses the process of policy options under multiple objectives. This is followed by the theoretical frameworks of urbanization as well as a critical assessment of sustainable urbanization policy in China. Then, the risks, challenges and externalities in Chinese sustainable urbanization are examined. Among them, the uniqueness of “mis-matched urbanization mode” characterized by labor, land and capital constrained by “institutions” is analyzed. Finally, various features associated with China’s urbanization mode at different levels are discussed to provide implications for future research and policy design.