Desakotas and beyond

Urbanization in Southern China

Bibliographic Data

ID2735192
AuthorsGregory Eliyu Guldin (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume35
Issue4
Pages265
Publication date1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1828 • E-ISSN: 2160-3510
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3773870
OpenAlexW207018284
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited2

China's fifteen-year-long economic boom has encouraged a rapid urban expansion as well as a significant transformation of its urbanization process. The number of urban places has increased, number of people living in urban places has increased, and number of people living urbanized lifestyles has increased. The dimensions of rural transformation that have given rise to these shifts include a move out of agriculture into nonagricultural occupations (projected at 40 per cent of rural labor force by year 2000), a demographic shift of villagers to towns, and remaking of rurally oriented towns into centers of production and communication (Lee 1992). In some regions of country, however, an even more significant change has begun: age-old town-and-country chasm is disappearing as quickly as a gap between metropolis and small urban area appears to take its place. Such a process of change is facilitated by an urbanization process that can be conceptually divided into three distinct dimensions, all with awkward English labels inspired by Chinese language discussions of these phenomena: deagriculturization, townization, and citization. The author apologizes for infelicitous introduction of neologisms and offers rationale that urbanization as a conceptual frame is too broad to describe urbanization process in contemporary China. To some analysts of Asian urbanization (Ginsburg, Koppel, and McGee 1991), such developments might reflect emergence in China of a new pattern of Asian urbanization, desakota process. Desakotas (the term is derived from Bihasa Indonesian terms for village and town) are transformed areas that are no longer clearly urban or rural areas, but a blending of two. Research throughout continent, and particularly Southeast Asia, has noted spread of this phenomenon. If desakotas are becoming dominant mode in China's late-twentieth-century urbanization transformation as well, then world is witnessing a significant new path of human settlement and development. SEARCHING FOR THE ESSENCE OF URBAN From perspective of China, dynamics of change unleashed in 1979 with new reform policies are historic and breathtaking, as society with the longest and largest continuous urban cultural tradition in world irrevocably industrializes and urbanizes (Southall 1993:19). The rapidity of above-mentioned social, demographic, and economic changes has certainly taken Chinese by surprise and forms a crucial part of how Chinese view their society and its development. To Chinese way of thinking (and indeed to bulk of humanity as well) urbanization is defined at folk level as many tall buildings, and folk comparisons of urbanization rates count tall building and relative ubiquity of cemented-over areas. (One town official told me that city planning in classic sense is absent when new buildings go up; people feel no need to leave green areas of trees and grass, considering them to be unnecessary rural intrusions in an urban scene.) Urbanization is also viewed as improving sanitation, such as covering sanitation ditches and cutting down on dust (like in Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and in Tiananmen Square), and as spread of appliance and electronic goods ownership. As images of rural poverty fade, one young woman in Guangdong remarked, Soon there will be no more villages, all will become industrialized districts. I hope it all gets industrialized: more people is good, there will be more jobs, and it'll be easier to make money! The folk view thus jumbles together conceptually distinct aspects of changes swirling about; urbanization, prosperity, nonfarm work, and industrialization. This commingling of concepts is in fact quite understandable as it represents reality of pre-1978, prereform era when rural household status did indicate likelihood of a far lower income, an agricultural work assignment, and few opportunities to pursue an urban lifestyle

Archaeology · China · Development economics · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Ethnology · Geography · Political science · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Urbanization · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · History · Philippine History and Culture · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

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