Urbanization is the Magic Word for Growing China’s Economy

What’s the Latest Development?

As the 1,500 American businesses officially operating in China continue to expand their operations, the success of their investments will ultimately depend on the Chinese government’s abilities to provide them with a customer base, according to Christian Murck, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. “Demand has to shift from external demand to internal demand, one way or another, if the economy is to continue growing,” said Murck. That means confronting fiscal challenges like a national trend in wage increases and an aging pool of laborers.

What’s the Big Idea?

Facilitating future economic growth in China has come to mean one principle thing: Urbanization. A massive national campaign is already underway to move 250 million peasants from their rural farmlands to budding mid-sized cities. “Successful urbanization,” said Murck, “or inclusive urbanization as some people are now calling it in the Chinese government, must mean that Chinese citizens will have the right to move anywhere within China, get a job, bring their family, buy a house, put their kid in public school, get the local retirement benefits and everything else.”

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Read it at the Washington Post