Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Commenter Don Johnson raised the question of how the speed of Chinese urbanization compared to other countries. Above are some relevant comparisons - with the US, Japan, and South Korea. Data are from the UN and the US Census Bureau.
China is urbanizing much faster than the US did, and probably Japan too, but not as fast as Korea. Of course, these are relative comparisons. The absolute scale of China's urbanization is completely unprecedented.
The Korean example doesn't seem to provide much support for my speculation that very fast urbanization processes end earlier due to running out of young people. Instead, all three precedents seem to have slowed down sharply around the 75% point. In the US case, this was reached in the 1960s, and we are still only 82% urban. Some of us just like living in the country.
China will reach that 75% point in about 2025 in my projection, but not until 2040 according to the UN which has them slowing down more smoothly starting soon: