Opinion - News Analysis   

China's urbanisation gains momentum

The average population in the towns increased by 27.5 per cent by 2005 from the year 2000.

CHINA'S URBANISATION drive has gained momentum over the last five years as its towns continue to develop rapidly in terms of population and industrial businesses.

Statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday show that the average population in China's towns increased by 27.5 per cent to 9,511 in 2005 from the year 2000. More than half of China's 20,000 towns had a population of over 30,000. A town in China is defined as having a population of between 2,000 and 120,000.

Statistics also show that the end of 2005, there were on average 520 enterprises in every town of which 180 were industrial enterprises. And the fiscal revenue of the towns in 2005 rose 130 per cent to 22.1 million yuan (2.76 million U.S. dollars) from the year 2000.

"The rapid development of towns and the emergence of tertiary industry in the have created tremendous job opportunities for rural labourers," said Zhang Weimin, deputy director of NBS, adding that more than 100 million rural labourers work in the country's towns.

Statistics show that the number of people working in enterprises in every town averaged 5,444 in 2005, an increase of 35 per cent from 2000.

Electricity was available in 99.5 per cent of towns, a postal service in 97.8 per cent of towns, and medical services in 99 per cent of towns.

— Xinhua

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Productive summit
Back to garibi hatao
Price regulation of essential medicines
The dilemma over defence agents
Republican demise, not Democratic revival
China's urbanisation gains momentum
Corrections and clarifications
Shocking
Sanctions on N. Korea
A setback
A dream fulfilled

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu