Draft plan sets urbanization target of 60 pct: report

A draft national urbanization plan has set an objective of achieving an urbanization rate of 60 percent, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper ­reported Wednesday.

This will involve 100 million people from rural areas settling in cities by 2020, the report said.

An unnamed expert said in the report that the urbanization rate will depend on the market to some extent, but the government will help to build a positive market environment to ­realize the target.

Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said ­earlier this year that the urbanization rate in 2012 reached 52.57 percent, similar to the average international level, the report noted.

The annual growth rate of urbanization will be around 0.92 percent in the next eight years, the report said, slightly lower than the growth rate since 2000.

The report cited a local official who said there is no need to worry about the decreasing growth rate, since China has reached the average international level. The new focus of urbanization is not on speed but quality, he said.