Скачать или смотреть 700 million and counting: the Urbanization of China

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The talk will be about urbanization in China over the last 40 years. During this period China has gone from a predominantly rural, agrarian, society, to an urban, industrial one. In the process, its urban population has grown extremely rapidly largely as a result of rural to urban migration, as have the number and size of its cities. China now has over 100 cities with over a million people. China’s urbanization process may not be the fastest the world has ever seen (Britain in the 1840s-1870s was also very rapid) but it is unquestionnably the largest and most of the new growth is taking the form of tower blocks. In the process, large areas of agricultural land have disappeared along with the livelihoods of tens of million of small farmers. The physical structure of China has been dramatically transformed along with its social structure.

Chris Hamnett is an emeritus professor at King’s College London. He first visited China in 1989, six weeks after Tiannamen Square, and on a more regular basis since 1995, and in the last 10 years after his retirement from King’s he has held several visiting professorships at Chinese universities in Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing, visiting for one or two months a year.