China, which is experiencing the world's largest urbanisation growth, will witness up to 300 million farmers moving into cities over the next two decades, the United Nations Development Programme has forecast.
China is experiencing the world's largest urbanisation movement and fast economic growth is driving the process, said the report.
The UN report, circulated by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, predicted that by 2010, there will be about 125 cities in China with a population of over one million. Fifty cities will have a population in excess of two million.
Despite fast economic growth since the 1980s, the contribution of Chinese city clusters to the national economy is lower than in developed countries.
Cities are still growing at breakneck pace and their production efficiency is low. Also, the high population density in Chinese cities creates problems for sustainable development, the report said.
City cluster development should be included in the national strategy and a national system should be set up, the report said.
China has over 1.3 billion people and more than 800 million are farmers.
Three million Chinese farmers are likely to lose their land every year for the next five years as the nation speeds towards urbanisation. Over the last ten years, around 40 million farmers have lost their land, officials from the ministry of labour and social security said recently.