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The purpose of this paper is to estimate the real urbanization level in China so as to provide a measurement that can be compared with the international level.

Taking into consideration 300m residents living in the administrative towns (300m residents here are referred to the population in administrative towns, including those in all counties), the gap between the urbanization rate of China and that of the world average becomes much wider.

China, however, implements the administrative system of government at the central, provincial, municipal, county and township levels. By city, it means the jurisdiction at and above the level of county, which includes the municipality directly under the central government, prefecture-level municipal and county. By town, it means the jurisdiction below the level of county (including the Chengguan Town, or capital town, where the county government is located) and exclusive of rural townships.

China has witnessed rapid development for 40 years since the reform and opening up in 1978. Nowadays, China has already stepped into the period of post-industrialization, with its urbanization rate (UR) of permanent population reaching 58.58 percent. However, on the basis of registered population, the UR is 43.37 percent, which is not only far below the average level of 81.3 percent in high-income countries, but also lower than the average of 65.8 percent in upper middle-income countries which are comparable to China in terms of per capita income. (The classification of state income level is based on the data of national income per capita and division standards in 2016 from the World Bank, in which annual revenue per capita in high-income countries reaches over US$12,736 and that in upper middle-income countries between US$4,126 and US$12,735.)

In this chapter we study internal and external, formal and informal, financing sources of Chinese firms during the period 1997–2006, by analyzing balance sheet data from the Chinese Industrial Surveys of Medium-sized and Large Firms for 2000–2006 and survey data from the Large-Scale Survey of Private Enterprises in China conducted in 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.

The following stylized facts emerge from our analysis: (1) State-owned firms continue to enjoy more generous external finances than other types of Chinese firms. (2) Chinese private firms have resorted to various ways of overcoming financial constraints, including reliance on the increasingly more mature informal financial markets, cost savings through lower inventory and other working capital requirements, and greater reliance on retained earnings. (3) Substantial variations exist in financial access among private firms, with small private firms facing more financial constraints whereas more established firms having financial access more equal to their SOE counterparts. (4) Although not as accessible as for SOEs, the Chinese formal financial sector does provide Chinese private firms with substantial financial resources, especially for their short-term needs during daily operations. (5) The most pressing financial constraint facing Chinese private firms is their limited ability to secure long-term funds to invest for growth, and resolving this issue should be one of the top goals of financial reforms in China.

We study the empirical determinants of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) covered interest differential. The canonical macroeconomic variables including capital flight and the factors that affect country risk, and a few China-specific regulatory and institutional factors are considered. It is found that the effects of these canonical macroeconomic variables on the RMB covered interest differential are largely consistent with those reported in the literature. Further, the covered interest differential was affected by China's general capital control policy and its exchange rate reform program, but not its political risk index. The effects of these explanatory variables on the covered interest differential appear to work mainly via the forward premium rather than the interest rate differential component. The results are largely the same across the onshore and offshore RMB forward rates that cover different sample periods.