SMALL TOWN DEVELOPMENT IN THE PERIPHERY OF BIG CITIES IN CHINA

Abstract

Abstract Since adopting the policy of reformation and opening to the outside world in 1978, remarkable changes have taken place in the social economic structure of China, and its urbanization has been speeded up. During the period of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, there were nearly 50,000 small towns in the whole country which absorbed about 50 million rural surplus labour. A number of small towns within the areas of jurisdiction of coastal metropolises have emerged and probably become new growth nodes of these regions. These latter small towns have developed in different steps, as the “reform and opening policy” of the nation has been carried out firstly in South China, and was then extended to the North. Difference in location, resource and original development level have also given them different characteristics. We used the cases of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou Metropolitan Regions to focus on several problems on the development of small towns in China's coastal metropolitan surroundings, using data from reports of the CIDA funded Asian Urban Research Network (AURN) international collaborative research project on Small Towns Development and Planning.