On this episode of China Uncensored,
China wants to build megacities
with more people than any city in human history.
But megacities could also mean mega-problems.
Hi, Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m your host, Chris Chappell.
Nothing screams long-term viability like
heavy-handed central planning.
Just ask the Soviet Union!
Oh wait, you can’t.
But the Chinese Communist Party
still believes in central planning.
And that’s why they want to build not one,
not two,
but as many as 19 megacities.
Some of them could be home to
more than 100 million people.
And really, what’s not to love about
living in a giant Chinese city?
Now sure, central planning
can occasionally have some small downsides.
Like that one time in the 1950s,
when Mao Zedong suggested that people
make steel in their backyards instead of farming their crops,
and then like 50 million people starved to death.
But oops, right?
Or more recently,
how the Chinese authorities have built
several ghost cities like Ordos
that hardly anyone moved into
because it’s too expensive and there are no jobs.
See, they’re learning from their mistakes.
And besides,
these new megacity projects will be totally different!
A few years ago, I talked about Jing-Jin-Ji,
the new megacity that the Party is constructing around Beijing.
Well, apparently that’s working so well,
they want to make another 18 of them.
The concept behind the megacities is the “cluster policy.”
China’s central planners believe that by creating
“mammoth urban clusters, anchored around giant hubs”
and containing dozens of nearby cities,
they can increase productivity and accelerate economic growth.
This idea is called the theory of agglomeration benefits.
It says that the bigger a city gets,
the more productive it is per person.
Supposedly, that’s because a large labor market
makes it easier for employers to find the right workers.
And as companies work together more closely,
more efficient supply chains are formed.
Know-how also spreads more easily,
and that increases innovation.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,
or OECD,
doubling a city’s population can increase productivity by 2-5%.
Some experts say that in China,
these gains could be even greater.
One New York university scholar says that,
if done right and integrated well,
China’s city clusters could achieve levels of productivity
never seen before.
He compares it to the “differences between England
and the rest of the world during the Industrial Revolution.”
Alain Bertaud of New York University
I mean, who could argue with that much productivity.
Labor economists are practically drooling right now.
But it’s possible—just possible—
that despite the best intentions of communist party officials,
China’s megacities won’t be integrated perfectly.
And if so, that could cause a host of problems.
Just think of all the nasty stuff
big Chinese cities are already known for…
like crowds...
traffic jams…
pollution…
security checkpoints before you get on the subway
Wait, no, I said subway.
That can’t be right!
What’s that Shelley?
Oh, they did introduce airport-style security checks
temporarily in Beijing after an alleged terror attack...
in a totally different part of the country.
Anyway, take all the standard big-city issues,
and multiply them across 100-plus million people.
And multiply that by 19 megacities.
That’s one heck of a math problem.
But one of the most widespread problems with megacities
is also one of the most basic.
Simply getting from A to B.
Theoretically, high-speed train lines should make this easy.
But that’s not quite the case in all of these future megacities.
For the Wang family, A is Yanjiao,
a 700 thousand strong bedroom community
where Mr. Wang lives,
and B is Beijing.
Mr. Wang gets up at 5 am
to stand for over an hour in a line
that stretches for several blocks,
for a bus to Beijing.
More specifically,
for a bus to Beijing for his daughter.
“As a parent, if she doesn’t get a seat,
I feel restless.
So I wait in line for her every day.”
The commute to Beijing is so bad,
that people’s elderly parents stand in bus lines
on behalf of their children
so they can get an extra hour of sleep and not burn out.
Then there’s Ms. Ding Shu,
who works in Shanghai and lives in Kunshan,
a satellite town linked to Shanghai by subway.
She’s out of luck, too.
“When you factor in her bus ride to the subway,
security checks to enter the station,
walking time and waiting time,
she spends about four hours a day commuting.”
In Yanjiao, there’s also a lack of schools and hospitals.
“The services are bad,” says Zheng Linyun,
whose 6-year-old was one of 65 kids in a grade-one classroom,
according to this New York Times article
aptly titled “As Beijing Becomes a Supercity,
the Rapid Growth Brings Pains.”
But maybe the economic benefits
outweigh the drawbacks?
Well, the jury’s out on that, too.
In an article from the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy
called “Did city cluster development help improve
labor productivity in China?”
the authors write that “the empirical results
reveal that the city cluster strategy initiated
in China's 11th Five-Year Plan
has not produced any significant impact
on labor productivity.”
With one exception:
the Yangtze River Delta super region.
Research shows that counties tied to this cluster
enjoy a 6% boost in productivity.
According to China Briefing,
the Yangtze River Delta cluster,
which combines Shanghai and several neighboring cities,
already accounts for about 20% of China’s GDP
and is the country’s richest region.
And the super-city they want to make it into
has a population of about 150 million people.
That's bigger than the entire populations of Canada,
the UK, and Australia combined.
And again,
China’s urban planners are building
19 of these mega clusters.
The average population of the five biggest ones
is 110 million.
But one reason they’re doing it is to actually
decrease the size of the major cities within each cluster.
The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want too many people
living in Beijing or Shanghai,
so they’ll limit the populations there are force people
into these bedroom communities that are
part of the same mega cluster.
But a big problem for these smaller cities
is that tax revenues from these places
don’t stay there,
but are instead pocketed by the central government
and distributed as they see fit.
This means needy cities have a big problem
to find ways to pay for new schools,
roads or bus service.
Changing this would mean restructuring how taxes
are collected and distributed,
and that would mean giving some centralized control
to the people in the community.
And according to that same NYU scholar,
giving power to the people is the very key
to make megacities something more than a mega pipe dream.
Bertaud says the central government should share authority
and give local communities an opportunity to organize themselves.
“If the central government tries to do everything,
they are going to mess up,
because they are not going to answer the local needs.”
But fostering a civil society
in which people actually have a say
in how they run their lives
has never exactly been the strong suit
of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Power grows out of the barrel of a gun,”
was Chairman Mao’s infamous saying,
not “power to the people.”
And now it’s that time when I answer questions
from fans who support China Uncensored
on the crowd funding website Patreon!
Colin Lee Bradford asks,
Do you think that there is an active campaign
to rewrite Chinese history?
Rewriting history is a classic move
of the Chinese Communist Party.
First, there’s all those ancient maps
the Party keeps discovering
that prove Chinese claims to disputed territory
since ancient times.
And the Communist Party has launched several campaigns
that changed how people looked at history.
For example, in 1973,
people were required to criticize Confucius
in the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius Campaign.
Lin referred to Lin Biao,
and that’s a whole ‘nother story.
But these days,
the Communist Party is using Confucius,
setting up Confucius institutes around the world
to spread Party propaganda.
And the Communist Party was photoshopping
before it was cool.
Before it even existed, actually.
Here’s a picture of Mao Zedong
looking awfully emaciated,
with three of his close comrades.
Except Bo Gu on the left was purged
and edited out from the history books.
History is what you make of it I guess.
So if you’d like to have me
answer your questions on the show,
support China Uncensored with a dollar or more
per episode on Patreon.
Your support is what keeps the show alive,
and you’ll get some cool perks.
Link is below.
And what do you think about China’s great plan
to condense into a country of super-regions?
Leave your comments below.
Once again I”m your host Chris Chappell,
see you next time.
Hey, do you like China Uncensored?
Be sure to subscribe, and click on that notification bell.
Actually, YouTube has not really been notifying subscribers
even if they turn the notification bell on.
So just be sure to check back every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for new episodes.
And hey - hit that "like" button while you're at it.