How urbanization can help the poor

Over the past three decades and a half, China's urban population has risen from less than one-fifth of the total to more than half, which means about 500 million people have been added to the urban population. By 2030, up to 70 percent of China's population is likely to live in cities - that is, one in every six urbanites in the world will live in China.

How China urbanizes, therefore, is important not only to China, but also the rest of the world. It is also critical for China's poor. The overwhelming majority of China's 100 million officially poor and the 275 million Chinese that spend less than $2 a day live in rural areas. But the key to getting them out of poverty lies in China's cities.

China's urbanization has supported the country's impressive growth and rapid economic transformation. Chinese cities provided cheap land, abundant labor and local governments eager to attract investment and create jobs. As a result, hundreds of millions left farm work to seek more higher paying jobs in cities - and 500 million people were lifted out of poverty in the process. Poverty in China is overwhelmingly a rural phenomenon - less than 3 percent of the urban population lives in poverty.