Research Articles: Preparing for China's “Urban Billion”—Policy Implications and Potential for International Cooperation

Abstract

Though China's overall degree of urbanization is still below most Western countries, for instance when compared to Europe where over 70% of the total population lives in cities, the speed and magnitude of urbanization is truly mind-blowing. The challenges of China's unparalleled urbanization will not only impact on China's future growth but also have important implications for other nations. The European Union (EU) and its 27 member states have faced or continue to face some of the similar challenges of city management. The EU-China Partnership on Sustainable Urbanisation, launched at the EU-China summit on February 14, 2012, in Beijing, is a response to these pressing common challenges and offer new opportunities for expanding and reinforcing EU-China relations. This article puts China's urbanization process in a historical prospective and points to the country's massive current urban challenges and the way to deal with them as set out in the 12th Five Year Plan. It will illustrate how the EU and China can work together constructively in tackling the challenge of urbanization by helping to make Chinese cities greener and more sustainable, and by adding a fresh dynamic to EU-China economic and trade relations.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the support from the Friends of Europe, in particular, Shada Islam and Maximilian Rech, the participants from the China Advisory Council's Greening China's cities of tomorrow project, and the three anonymous reviewers of this article.

Notes

Notes

1. EU-China Low Carbon Economy Platform, a project funded by the European Commission. See more details at http://www.chinalce.eu/.

2. More case studies on UK enterprises' experiences in China can be found in UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) reports on line at http://www.ukti.gov.uk/home.html.

3. For a more detailed report, please refer to the 2006 article by Alex Pasternack on Beijing's eco-friendly architecture.

4. Further details can be found in the article by Shaheen et al. (2011).