This dissertation seeks to understand the unique pattern of China's urbanization after 1949 in terms of the fundamental characteristics of the Chinese economic system. The overall aim is to tease out the determinants of urbanization in China in particular, as well as in socialist countries more generally. Under-urbanization, defined here as the achievement of a high industrial growth without a parallel growth of urban population, can be plausibly viewed as a typical phenomenon of socialist economies and is widely recognized in the special case of China.
The proliferation of research on Chinese urbanization in the last two decades has expanded considerably our understanding of why China was under-urbanized under socialism. Much of this research has identified the rural-bias and urban-bias perspectives as two main approaches for explanation. While rural-bias perspective stressed ideological influence, urban-bias perspective emphasized the impact of industrialization strategy on urbanization. To date, urban-bias explanation has attracted wide attention and recognition.
In contrast to the thrust of the extant literature on urbanization in the context of socialist economies, where industrialization strategies alone are taken as fundamental in explaining what we find evolving through time, I have focused, rather, on systemic characteristics that have not received the thorough treatment already given the strategies of industrialization. Using Kornai's framework for analyzing system changes in socialist countries, this study argues that the root cause of Chinese under-urbanization was systemic, in which state controls and the state-biased nature play a decisive role.
Under the central theme of exploring the systemic impact on urbanization, my inquiries first focus on the rationale, mechanisms, and changes of state control over urbanization in the context of the public ownership in China. Analysis then centers on the urbanization impact of "state-biased" development. It looks at how urbanization is undercut by key elements of "state-biased" development strategies.