ADB to Develop Urbanization Strategy to Boost Living Standards in China

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - A US$500,000 ADB technical assistance (TA) grant will help develop an integrated and sustainable urbanization strategy that will increase productivity and living standards in metropolitan regions in the People's Republic of China (PRC).

The strategy, to be developed in consultation with government officials, academics, policy advisors, and other stakeholders, will cover job creation, social services, the environment, infrastructure, transport, governance, and financing capacities to support needed investments.

The TA will also select the regions and cities to spearhead the urbanization strategy, which will be adopted by the Government during its 11th Five-Year Plan, and identify priority investment and policy areas that will need special attention from the Government.

"The TA is a response to the Government's interest in promoting urbanization in metropolitan regions to generate a wide range of jobs for rural migrants," says Sangay Penjor, an ADB Principal Financial Specialist. "The Government is also intent on making this urbanization environmentally sustainable."

There are 53 metropolitan regions in the PRC anchored on cities with more than 1 million non-farming residents and comprising selected adjacent counties and county-level cities. They contain almost 370 million people, or 29% of the country's population, but produce 53% of the PRC's GDP and more than 62% of all non-farming GDP.

Most of these metropolitan regions still have low levels of urbanization. However, they experience many of the negative externalities of urban and suburban growth. Air and water pollution continue to be serious problems in the PRC's cities, with vehicle emissions a growing contributor and water shortages still a major problem.

Many of these regions are also expanding rapidly through undirected suburbanization, resulting in inefficient land use, transport, and services. Transport links between the core city and suburban towns also remain limited.

The TA will produce an improved ADB urban sector operational strategy for the PRC and a new PRC-ADB urban strategy to guide ADB's lending and nonlending operations over the next five years.

The Government will contribute $125,000 toward the TA's total cost of $625,000. The National Development and Reform Commission's Department of Development Planning is the executing agency for the TA, which will be carried out over eight months beginning in May 2006.

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