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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

The manufacturing centers of China do not employ 1.4 billion people. Lets stop exagerating please. China is still rural at ita core despite a few regions with massive cities.

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China's urban population is over 740 million[1]. For perspective the USA is almost 260 million[2]. I don't think your assumption holds up in the modern world. Maybe 20 years ago.

https://www.quandl.com/data/WORLDBANK/CHN_SP_URB_TOTL-China-...

https://www.quandl.com/data/WORLDBANK/USA_SP_URB_TOTL-United...

thats still half of China's population. Thats basically still a country in transition from a rural era to an industrial one. In any developed country the percentage of folks living in cities is way higher.

Census in 2000 in the US reported 79% of Americans living in Urban Areas. It is surely even higher now.

It's still wrong to call a country with over half its population in cities "rural at its core". It isn't transitioning from a 'rural era' either. It's more urbanized than Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia, and several other developed countries[1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country

Even your Wikipedia link confirms what I said earlier. China is the bottom half for urbanization globally. Morocco is more urbanized than China, and I've never heard of anyone describing Morocco as an urbanized country. So this is really your bias at work. I have travelled in China several times and as soon as you go outside of the large cities, you'll see great poverty and rural life everywhere. It's changing, but it will take time to move hundred of millions of people to the cities.

It doesn't confirm that China is 'rural at its core' at all. When more than half the world lives in urban centers then being in the bottom half doesn't mean anything. If over half a country lives in urban centers then you simply can't call the country 'rural at its core'. It has a massive rural population, but it isn't 'rural at its core'.

To make an edit: I think we're arguing over semantics of terms at this point. I don't think we're actually disagreeing about anything important. I never asked for China to be called urbanized (although I would use that term if forced to use one or the other), just that calling it 'rural at its core' doesn't hold up anymore. If you still think that statement holds true, then I'm sorry that we're going to have different definitions of that term.

I didn't make that claim, only that China has a population of 1.4 billion. Chase your shaggy dog elsewhere.

China is now majority urban (more people live in cities than on rural land) and has been for a few years now.

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