*3.1. The Essential Fact of Urbanization and Rural Development in China*

China has witnessed rapid urbanization in the past 40 years or so. The urbanization was 18.92% in 1978 and reached 59.59% in 2018. In 1978, there were only a 17.254 million urban population and 79.014 million rural population. However, there are now an 83.137 million urban population and 56.401 million rural population (Figure 1). In the past 40 years or so, China has made great progress in urbanization, which may have taken about a hundred years for some Western countries.

**Figure 1.** Changes in urban and rural population distributions in China. Source: China Statistical Yearbook 1979–2019.

The various geographical conditions in China result in the differences in population distribution patterns between the East and West, which present as "more in the East and less in the West". There are three steps in the terrain of China, which bring about three natural regions: the Eastern monsoon climate region, northwest arid and semiarid region and Qinghai Tibet alpine region. To a certain extent, the natural conditions determine the basic pattern of China's population distribution and urbanization development. Hu Huanyong, a famous geographer in China, put forward the important dividing line of population geography in 1935. Since Hu Huanyong proposed the line, the macropattern of the

population distribution has been basically stable. The population on the western side of the "Hu line" is still less, and that on the eastern side is more (Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** Population distribution of China in 2015. Source: 1% National Population Sample Survey 2015.

China's government has taken various measures to promote urban and rural development recently. Especially in rural construction, targeted poverty alleviation and creating beautiful countryside are two typical measures. Targeted poverty alleviation aims to make all destitute households lifted out of poverty and backwardness. It includes providing jobs, various subsidies, serious illness insurance, etc., to protect the basic lives of them, and small loans, industrial poverty alleviation, and relocation to solve permanent poverty. The construction of beautiful countryside is to allow the exploration of special resources around big cities. Fresh air, leisure life and rural life are known to attract urban tourists, which contributes to farmers' income through the linkage of agriculture and tourism.
