Intercity migration and urban system development in China

Abstract

China has witnessed rapid urbanization in the past decades. The huge quantity of migrants blurred the boundaries of urban and rural and changed the sizes of cities. Urban demographic change in China, which is the largest developing country in the world with a vast territory and a huge population, is highly influenced by internal migration. Questions about the current and historical pace of migration, the role of migrants in the urban growth, the migration pattern at different stages of the urban development, and the relations between intercity migration and urban system development are often raised. Due to the data limitation, few studies have answered the above questions. Furthermore, little is known about the intercity migration in China and its influence on urban system development. By employing the most current data available on intercity migration in China and combining the strengths of different forms of data, this thesis attempts to provide answers to the above questions. Through analyzing the quantities, attributes, and preferences of intercity migrants in the urban system from 2000 to 2015, this thesis provides multiple perspectives to understand the urban system development in China. Major findings are summarized as follows. First, this thesis discovers a nine-level urban hierarchy for 296 Chinese cities based on the intercity migration flows derived from individual migration behaviors of millions of users on Sina Weibo, the largest social media in China, from 2011 to 2015. This urban hierarchy shows a mixed characteristic indicating multi-dimensional features of cities such as population size, governance power, and economic development. Second, this thesis reveals the intercity migration pattern in China, points out that net migration mainly follows an upward pattern through the urban hierarchy, but it already emerges the early sign of the downward pattern in the top tier cities. Most of the intercity migrants are moving to the eastern region and increasingly concentrated among a few mega-city regions. Polycentric mega-city regions will be the main form of urban system in the future. Third, China is standing at a turning point from an era of migration to an era of transition. The quantity of intercity migrants is reducing, but the quality is increasing. Facing the aging problem and the upcoming labor shortage, better educated and skilled young immigrants will be the core competitiveness of cities. Migrants will continue to play key roles in affecting the urban system development. Fourth, attributes of migrants such as age, education, hukou (household registration), gender, and employment will affect people’s migration preferences, thus shape different characteristics of cities, and further contribute to the features of the urban system. Besides, external factors such as policy and culture also have a significant influence on people’s migration behaviors. In sum, this thesis fills a gap of data deficiency on intercity migration study, enriches the migration theory by revealing the current and historical patterns of intercity migration in the developing country China, and contributes to the urban system study by examining the characteristics of the urban system in China from structural, spatial, and temporal dimensions using intercity migration as an indicator.