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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.)

This paper studies the political economy of the endogenous urban–rural divide in two dimensions: labor market and provision of public goods.

This paper gives a dual-sector model endogenously depending on the consumption of public goods (club goods), the number of rural–urban migrants and the tax rate (transfer payments).

According to the research findings in this paper, the constraints on the participation of rural residents portray the rural residents' bargaining power, and in the game between the urban elites and the rural residents, tax rates depend on the preferences of the urban elites and the constraints urban elites and the rural residents jointly face. Therefore, the urban elites have to set tax rates deviating from the most preferred ones. The model in this paper can explain a series of empirical findings and yield new theoretical findings for empirical testing.

Significantly, the paper finds that the increase in agricultural productivity will lead to industrialization, accompanied by the disintegration of the dual-sector model. However, though the increase in industrial productivity can accelerate industrialization, it will further expand the urban–rural divide.

China’s economic development in the past 40 years has an array of distinctive features that have attracted the attention of the world. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The analysis logic is as follows: with regard to the mechanism, the above factors were met in a timely manner and jointly contributed positive energy to China’s economic growth, with the increase in the savings rate as the necessary condition and foundation, and the increase in the savings rate is attributed to the explosive expansion of the financial system at the beginning of reform and the formation of positive incentives for residents, enterprises and governments at all levels, and the expansion of the financial system and the formation of positive incentives are clearly the crystallization of the wisdom of Chinese-style progressive reform.

Therefore, we have every reason to believe that the growth prospects of the Chinese economy remain bright. The author is nonetheless confident that the new two-step strategy for economic development will be realized, proposed by the 19th CPC National Congress.

Moreover, the growth of China’s economy has long been accompanied by the “double surplus” of current accounts and capital and financial accounts in the international balance of payments, which is not completely consistent with the traditional paradigm of development economics. These phenomena are so unique that the international community calls it the “Mystery of China” or “China’s Development Path.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of urbanicity on rural–urban migrants' dietary diversity and nutrition intake and whether its effect differs across various urban environments of migrants.

Using the individual- and time-invariant fixed effects (two-way FE) model and five-year panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this paper estimates a linear and nonlinear relationship between urbanicity and nutrition. The paper also explores the spatial heterogeneity between rural–urban migrants and rural–suburban migrants. Dietary diversity, total energy intake and the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat, respectively, are used to measure rural–urban migrants' nutrition on both quality and quantity aspects.

The study shows that rural–urban migrants have experienced access to more diverse, convenient and prepared foods, and the food variety consumed is positively associated with community urbanicity. Energy intake is positively and significantly affected by community urbanicity, and it also varies with per capita household income. The obvious inverse U-shaped relationship reveals that improving community urbanicity promotes an increase in the shares of energy obtained from protein and fat at a decreasing rate, until reaching the urbanicity index threshold of 66.69 and 54.26, respectively.

This paper focuses on the nutritional status of rural–urban migrants, an important pillar for China's development, which is often neglected in the research. It examines the urbanicity and the nutrition of migrants in China, which provides a new perspective to understand the dietary and nutritional intake among migrants in the economic and social development. Moreover, the urbanicity index performs better at measuring urban feathers rather than the traditional rural/urban dichotomous classification.

At present, the Chinese economy has entered the “new normal” phase with the transformation of development stages from the low-income to the middle-income ones. Accordingly, there appear a series of innovations in development theories. Innovations involve creative destructions. Therefore, innovative development theories at the present stage either deny the prevailing principles of development economics, or deny the theories that once effectively guided development at the low-income stage, or even sublate some of the development polices which were propelled and proved effective at the beginning of the reform and opening-up. The fundamental reason is that, as the development stages evolve, there occur new development tasks, new periodical characteristics and new laws of development. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Any development theory from abroad will find it difficult to correctly guide and clarify development problems in a socialist country, such as the huge population and the extreme imbalance between the urban and the rural and among regional developments.

In conclusion, China, as a large world economy, has made innovations in its economic development theory, which indicates that it intends to perfect itself rather than seek hegemony. As the world’s second largest economy, China should adapt to the transformation and further free people’s minds instead of adhering to the old patterns of thinking. It should think over the path of development for a great world economy from the historical starting point of a large world economy and find development strategies to transform itself from a large economy to a great economy, so as to realize the dream of the Chinese nation to build a powerful country.

Only political economy studies both the relations of production and the productive forces, and only a theory combining both can correctly guide China’s economic development, which especially needs to be promoted by taking advantage of socialist economic system. Therefore, the first and foremost principle for a socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is to insist on liberating and developing productive forces.

During the process of reform and opening-up, the structural transformations of the Chinese economy have two significant leaps forward and demonstrate a process of “rural area–industrialization (urban industry and rural industry)–urbanization” development powered by the main engine of economic growth.

These two leaps forward resulted in transitions of economic structure in China. In the author’s view, structural transformations are closely related to China's economic reforms and can be divided into clear phases.

The structural transformations have two significant leaps forward and demonstrate a process of “rural area–industry (urban industry and rural industry)–urban area development” powered by the main engine of economic growth.

This paper reviews and summarizes the development and structural transformations in China’s economy over the last 40 years. The author believes that China’s economic miracle is accompanied by dramatic changes in its economic structure, which is particularly characterized by the ongoing process of transition from a traditional agricultural economy into a country with high industrial output, from industrialization into urbanization and from a planned economy into a market economy.

Poverty alleviation has been a major theme of China's modernization process since the founding of New China. This paper points out that China's poverty alleviation process presents three stylized facts: “Miraculous” achievements of poverty alleviation have been made on a global scale; the poverty alleviation achievements mainly occurred in the high growth stage after reform and opening up; the poverty alleviation process is accompanied by the structural transformation of the urban–rural dual economy.

Therefore, a logically consistent analytical framework should form among the structural transformation of the dual economy, economic growth and the achievements in poverty alleviation. In logical deduction, the structural transformation of the dual economy affects rural poverty alleviation through the effects of labor reallocation, agricultural productivity improvement, demographic change and fiscal resource allocation.

The first two refer to economic growth, and the latter two are alleviation policies. The combination of economic growth and poverty alleviation policies is the main cause for poverty alleviation performance. China's empirical evidence can support the four effects by which the structural transformation of the dual economy affects poverty alleviation.

China's socialist system and its economic system transformation after reform and opening up provide an institutional basis for the effects to come into play. After 2020, China's poverty alleviation strategies will enter the “second-half” phase, namely, the phase of solving the problems of relative poverty in urban and rural areas by adopting conventional methods and establishing long-term mechanisms. This requires the facilitation of the reconnection between poverty alleviation strategies and the structural transformation of the dual economy in terms of development ideas and policy directions.

The rate of urbanisation in China has accelerated community heterogeneity, and yet it has also led to challenges and problems in community governance. This trend has been accompanied by the rapid expansion of information and communication technology (ICT) and online activities. Based on the example of Jiangqiao Township in Shanghai, this paper aims to probe the link between online participation using the internet and its impacts on social capital formation and community development.

A literature review was conducted, and a case study method based on quantitative data was applied to test the theoretical framework in the interactions of users’ online participation and perceptions of community governance.

Participation in an online community through the internet was found to foster new social capital. Distributed social capital had a positive impact on perceptions of governance at the community level, which was due to the resulting network density and social trust of the locality.

This study offers an expanded perspective on the impact of the internet on the behaviour of netizens in China in the context of community governance in new settlements and townships. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is interesting to investigate how the use of mass communication channels, such as the internet and other digital platforms, affects social behaviour and generates new social norms. This study offers quantitative evidence from China to support the theory of Putnam (1993; 1995a). It thus extends beyond the field of sociology to the fields of public administration and urban development.

As an important indicator of the quality of life of individuals, residential environments are continuing to evolve, due to the rapidly changing production–consumption relations. However, in this evolving process, the effect of the differentiated residential environments on the individuals' residential satisfaction remains unclear. This paper aims to measure the effects of the varying residential environments on the overall quality of urban life (QoUL) in Kayseri, one of the most developed cities in Central Anatolia.

It is based on empirical data on the quality of life in the different residential environments of Kayseri. The research method used stratified purposeful sampling, and the household survey data were analyzed using factor analysis, multiple regression and ANOVA statistical methods.

The most influential factors on the overall QoUL of individuals living in different Kayseri residential neighborhoods were satisfaction with neighborhood and city-level urban services, neighborhood relations and belonging factor groups. The critical finding obtained in this study is that residential satisfaction in low-rise and compact form housing areas in Kayseri is higher compared to residential satisfaction in high-rise neighborhoods. This result reveals that the high-rise building typology that is dominant in Turkey's big cities should be seriously questioned, and urban development policies should be re-evaluated.

The study was designed to produce baseline data so that future changes in residential conditions as perceived by the residents of Kayseri could be monitored to support decisions for residential areas.

Comparative case studies, particularly on low-rise versus high-rise environments, are scarce. As a result, this research contributes to the field of comparative studies on residential environments.