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China's Urban Billion: The Story behind the Biggest Migration in Human History
Author(s): Tom Miller (Author)
- Publisher: Zed Books
- Publication Date: 22 Nov. 2012
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 200 pages
- ISBN-10: 1780321422
- ISBN-13: 9781780321424
Book Description
Over the past thirty years, China’s urban population expanded by 500 million people, and is on track to swell by a further 300 million by 2030. Hundreds of millions of these new urban residents are rural migrants, who lead second-class lives without access to urban benefits. Even those lucky citizens who live in modern tower blocks must put up with clogged roads, polluted skies and cityscapes of unremitting ugliness. The rapid expansion of urban China is astonishing, but new policies are urgently needed to create healthier cities.
Combining on-the-ground reportage and up-to-date research, this pivotal book explains why China has failed to reap many of the economic and social benefits of urbanization, and suggests how these problems can be resolved. If its leaders get urbanization right, China will surpass the United States and cement its position as the world’s largest economy. But if they get it wrong, China could spend the next twenty years languishing in middle-income torpor, its cities pockmarked by giant slums.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Urbanisation will be the great theme of China’s trajectory over the next decade and beyond, and Tom Miller is its superb, street-wise guide. He expertly explains the economic, social and environmental consequences of China’s expanding cities and shrinking villages, and above all never loses sight of the people at the heart of this transformation. In China’s Urban Billion, Miller takes what could have been a dry, abstract topic and delivers a vivid and highly readable account of momentous change. –Chris Buckley, Beijing correspondent, The New York Times
In this book Tom Miller, a longtime Beijing resident and journalist, takes a penetrating look at what has led China astray in its rush to urbanise and what can be done to fix the resulting problems… Miller’s cogent analysis is buttressed by colourful reportage, a reminder of the human fabric that hangs in the balance. And- no mean feat for a book about a potentially dry topic-it is a consistently good read. –Financial Times
