CRI听力:China is Transforming to City-based Country

Reporter: The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, or CASS, released a report earlier this week, saying that the population in China's urban areas reached 691 million in 2011.

As more than 51 percent of this country's population now lives in an urban setting, it marks the beginning of a city-based country.

The report lists five criteria for a city-based country, of which population and rural-urban spatial arrangement are basic components.

Pan Jiahua is director of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies at CASS. He says the urban population increase is due to development, but that it is not the ultimate goal.

"Urbanization does not mean that we force everybody to skyscrapers in cities. Only when the infrastructure and living standards in rural areas are comparable, or even better, than that in urban areas can we say urbanization is a success."

The report also says the income disparity between urban and rural residents is growing rapidly and is now 26 percent higher than it was in 1997.

Average incomes in this China's urban areas are 5.2 times higher than they are in the countryside.

Pan gives reasons for the income disparity.

"The reason is because capable people, including the well-educated, highly-skilled, and physically strong labor force, choose to work and live in cities. Disparity in land prices and the gap between industrial and agricultural product values also worsen the income gap."

Due to the income gap, the report predicts that there will be more than 200 million people flooding to cities from the countryside in the next 20 years.

"In the past few years, China is speeding up its urbanization by nearly one percent every year. If we continue like this in the following 20 years, the population growth in cities will be as much as the total population of America. It is a challenge for us to push forward relevant support in infrastructure, job vacancies, residencies, and environmental protection."

Pan adds that China's urbanization still has a long way to go in aspects such as lifestyle, social culture and coordination between urban and rural areas.

For CRI, I'm Robert Costello.