Socialist Ideology and Urban Strategies in China

The past and current strategies for the development of Chinese and urban systems were examined with a view to assess the extent to which the socialist ideal'' has been met. Despite political upheavals and ideological conflicts, the level of urbanization, defined according to the proportion of population living in the administratively defined and towns, has been kept low, because of the consistent aim of minimizing the rural-urban contradictions. Although the internal structures of most Chinese still retained characteristics of their capitalistic past, the high degree of standardization and class uniformity conformed to the Marxist-Leninist principles of city planning. The spatial system of had been specifically developed to redress the balance between the coast and the interior. The urban strategy has recently shifted to a more realistic appraisal of the inherent characters of the by dropping the consumer versus producer cities dichotomy and the development of the sma...