Throughout history, China has remained at the forefront of innovative development and has remained active, in terms of driving capitalist attitudes on a worldwide scale. Whilst this remains, China is becoming under increasing pressures in terms of economic growth and how the country ‘positions’ within the global market. Issues in terms of the economic shifts from rural to urban lifestyles and industrialisation have had profound effects on the country’s demographic, furthermore, concerns with population legislation and the growth of neighbouring economic entities such as Hong Kong and Singapore have positioned China within the complex of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ label from which it has been accustomed in both a geographical and, now perhaps, a more economic sense. Wei-Ming suggests that the ‘Middle Kingdom complex’ may have been ‘psychologically difficult for Chinese leadership to abandon a sense of superiority at the center’. As a result, Wei-Ming goes on to highlight that China had never been challenged by an ‘alien equal’ such as invasions from the West, physically or culturally, whilst invasion of the Mongols and the prorogation of further Buddhist principles from Indian become effectively incorporated within Chinese culture. It is from this geo-political position that China has now been somewhat ‘de-centred’ by the coming of the Western influence.
In terms of population, China can be seen to have two fundamental, inter-connecting concerns. Firstly, there is the issue of previous legislation on birth control and the restriction of only one child per family in order to curb the population boom. This leads onto the second issue in that the ratio of elderly to young individuals in society is rising in favour of an elderly population. Jackson and Howe indicate that in 2004 the elderly population, defined by aged 60 and over, made up 11% of the population, however, predictions for 2040 suggest that this will rise to 28% based on a continuum of economic growth. Howe and Jackson estimate that this will translate to a figure of around 397 Chinese elders within the population; which they suggest would comprise of the total population of several of other countries including France, Germany and Japan as well as others. Yi and Vaupel expand on this demographic and focus on fertility effects and urbanisation, as a consequence to an ageing population identified by Jackson and Howe, Yi and Vaupel suggest that urban growth in particular is effected by this and that delayed childbearing in urban areas will contribute to the overall rise of an elderly population on ratio.
When looking more intricately at economic growth of Chinese society, Chan highlights historical trends within Chinese populations in terms of urban economic growth. His study focuses on urban growth since 1949 and illustrates issues in terms of evaluating such growth accurately. Chan suggests that for the most part, that the actual size of China’s urban population remains elusive with varying estimates and demographic studies proving incoherent. He draws on the example of Shanghai, with demographic studies carried out in 1982 estimating a population of around 10 million, yet, Chinese researchers estimated this to be around 5-6 million in actuality.
Industrialisation of the Chinese state has seen an extensive upheaval over the last century. Deng et al conducted a study into the urban expansion of China; while focusing specifically on earlier developments from 1980-2000, they concluded that the development of industrialisation and the growth of the service sector did effect the growth of the urban populations, despite this, the growth seen within these sectors and the effect they had on the direct growth of the economy as a whole were considered relatively small. Long and Zhang expand on these findings and surmise that ‘although there are a large number of measures of regional specialisation and industry concentration, they do not capture interconnectedness among firms’. In effect, there is a high concentration of specialist industry within a very small area. Long and Zhang have attributed China’s rapid expansion within industry as achieved through a model of concentration. Through this model, we see numerous ‘speciality cities’ or clusters of industrial growth rather than a progressive and balanced system. Naturally, this returns to problems within the overall growth of China’s economy in which we see little balance in dispersion of high-production industry across the country.
In conclusion, this assignment has examined China in terms of its status as suffering from a ‘Middle Kingdom’ syndrome in terms of its geo-political positioning and movement towards western influence and the rise of other Asian powers such as Taiwan, Korea and Singapore. Population proves to be an increasing problem with the ratio of elderly to young individuals increasing in favour of the former, consequently due to previous legislation of childbirth. Lastly, I have briefly discussed the situation of industry within the Chinese economy, in which the country seems to concentrate resources and industry within high-urban concentration areas rather than move towards a balanced scattering of these ‘speciality cities’.
Bibliography
Chan, K. W. (1985, November 1st). Urban population growth and Urbanization in China since 1949: Reconstructng a baseline. The China Quarterly , pp. 583-613.
Howe, R. J. (2004). The Greying of the Middle Kingdom. Washington: Center for Srategic and International Studies.
Vaupel, Z. Y. (1989). The imapact of Urbanization and delayed childbearing on population growth and aging in China. Population and Development Review , 15 (3), 425-445.
Wei-Ming, T. (1991). Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center. Daedalus , 120 (2), 1-32.
Xiangzheng Deng, J. H. (2007). Growth, population and industrialization, and urban land expansion of China. Journal of Urban Economics , 95-115.
Zhang, C. L. (2010). Cluster-based industrialization in China: financing and performance. Xiamen University . Xiamen: Xiamen University .
