[Vince Ferrer]

It appears nobody in Beijing has quite worked out the social consequences of forced migration. Apparently, the premise of the urbanization push is that the state will be able to control rural migrants in the new cities. People will be concentrated in small areas where block committees and Communist Party members can keep tabs on the arrivals from rural areas. “Thus the sea in which fish can swim becomes much smaller and more controllable,” writes Eric Kalkhurst, a China trade consultant.

I am becoming a fan of John Calhoun, a 20th century scientist who dealt with the effects of population density. He performed some experiments on rats where he build rat cities where all of their needs, except infinite living space, were taken care of. These rat utopias all had the same end, population growth until a point when the behavior of rat society fell apart, followed by a complete and permanent collapse of the rat city.

His experiments became very famous, and were debated endlessly as to whether they applied to humans. Then he sort of fell out of fashion. But if he is correct, these Chinese cities, no matter how successful they are, or even because of their success, will be the cause of the collapse of China.

[TexGrill]

You’re right Beijing hasn’t though about all the social implications of urbanization. I met one official touting his urban plan but when I asked him how he would deal with the rise of street crime, he looked clueless. It seemed as if he had never pondered this dilemma before proposing China megacities as the wave of the future.