The Research on China’s Urban System and Internal Migration

Xin Lao is a research assistant of School of Public Policy&Management, Tsinghua University, with a PhD degree of Regional Economics from School of Government, Peking University, and she used to be a visiting scholar in Harvard University from 2013 to 2014. Her research interests focus on China's urbanization, urban system and internal migration.

China's urbanization has become an important issue influencing the world. Therefore, this book will conduct a research on China's urban system and internal migration. The first paper analyzes and reveals the spatial structural features of China's urban system by comparing its transportation and economic urban networks, thus providing new avenues for research on China's city network. The results indicate that these two networks relate with each other by sharing structural equivalence with a basic diamond structure and a layered intercity structure decreasing outwards from the national centers, and a decoupling effect also exists between them as the transportation network contributes to a balanced regional development, while the economic network promotes agglomeration economies. Based on the data of China's 2000 and 2010 population census, the second paper examines spatial distribution and changes of China's internal migration to cities at the prefectural and higher levels, figuring out China's internal migration trend and spatial pattern in terms of both migration size and intensity.