ML-Implode News - China's Great Uprooting - Moving 250 Million Into Cities

The primary motivation for the urbanization push is to change China's economic structure, with growth based on domestic demand for products instead of relying so much on export. In theory, new urbanites mean vast new opportunities for construction companies, public transportation, utilities and appliance makers, and a break from the cycle of farmers consuming only what they produce. "If half of China's population starts consuming, growth is inevitable," said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. "Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume."
Skeptics say the government's headlong rush to urbanize is driven by a vision of modernity that has failed elsewhere. In Brazil and Mexico, urbanization was also seen as a way to bolster economic growth. But among the results were the expansion of slums and of a stubborn unemployed underclass, according to experts.
...
The coming urbanization plan would aim to ... give farmers a permanent stream of income from the land they lost. Besides a flat payout when they moved, they would receive a form of shares in their former land that would pay the equivalent of dividends over a period of decades to make sure they did not end up indigent.

...
Financing the investment needed to start such projects is a central sticking point. Chinese economists say that the cost does not have to be completely borne by the government -- because once farmers start working in city jobs, they will start paying taxes and contributing to social welfare programs.

"Urbanization can launch a process of value creation," said Xiang Songzuo, chief economist with the Agricultural Bank of China and a deputy director of the International Monetary Institute at Renmin University. "It should start a huge flow of revenues."

Even if this is true, the government will still need significant resources to get the programs started.

Relevant:

China's Great Uprooting - Moving 250 Million Into Cities