Improving city clusters' ability to function as regional boosters

The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee has set a new orientation for China's urbanization based on improving the function of city clusters. This is a significant change in China's urbanization policy. Beijing News comments:

The urbanization plan issued in 2014 promoted migrant workers being incorporated as urban residents in an orderly manner and facilitated the equalization of basic public services in cities. It also encouraged rural residents to settle in small and medium-sized cities and strictly controlled the populations of cities with over 5 million residents.

As China's social and economic development steps into a new stage, it will develop city clusters and the medium and small-sized cities surrounding big cities. Developing small and medium-sized cities and strictly controlling the size of large cities are no longer the priority.

Rural residents that move to cities are the actual beneficiaries of urbanization, especially of the development of big cities, because big cities are capable of providing more jobs and better public services. As rural residents flowing into big cities would remain the population mobility trend in the near future despite the government's control policy, developing city clusters and the surrounding medium and small-sized cities may be a better policy choice as the big cities can play the role of economic drivers for their surrounding regions.

City clusters are important in the global competition and for international cooperation. Highly integrated city clusters centered on a big city gather more production factors and have stronger competitiveness, which have a significant influence on the regional, national and even global economy.

For instance, China's Yangtze River Delta urban belt is centered on Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta city cluster is centered on Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in November 2012, China has advanced several urban development policies to cultivate city clusters and metropolitan areas, which will help form new advantages in regional competition and provide significant support to economic transition and upgrading.