Within the next five decades, the population in cities and towns will reach between 1.1 billion and 1.2 billion, while a well-organized, complementary and optimized "urban system" will be set up, said the report.

The report described this system as open, mobile, well-organized and complementary. Such an urban system is expected to solve the problems faced by the current urbanization process in China, such as the fact that the big cities are still not considered big enough and the medium-sized ones do not play as active a role in the Chinese economy as they should.

Around 100 experts and scholars from China and abroad produced the report, the first in China on urban development.

According to the report, only 11 percent of the Chinese population lives in cities with populations of 1 million or more. This compares to the world average level of 16 percent.

The Chinese mainland has 662 cities and more than 20,000 towns, with a combined total population of over 480 million.

China's current low degree of urbanization, its insufficient urban population and economic scale in many large cities have limited economic development and affected national competitiveness, said scientist Niu Wenyuan, one of the report's main authors.

Jiang Zhenghua, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said at the report's launch ceremony Thursday that China's urbanization still lags behind that of developed countries.

(China Daily December 20, 2002)