I am 58 years old and I’ve witnessed China’s decades of development firsthand. Today, China’s first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are in no way inferior to the big cities in the developed countries or places like Europe. Even in urban development, they are far better than many big cities abroad. I have been to more than 100 countries, and I know from personal experiences that we lead the world in our technology and urban construction.

Feng Yougen, Chairman of Panlong Group, Xiangtan, Hunan

Urban Apocalypse

In 1800, only 2% of humanity lived in cities; today, it is 55%, according to the UN. In the next 33 years, the population will grow by 2.9 billion—equal to another China and India—and 80 to 90% of the people will live in cities—but what kind of cities?

In 1960, Lagos, Nigeria, had less than 200,000 people. The population today is 21 million and projected to reach 85 to 100 million people by 2100—and the urban poverty will be mindboggling—even in “richer” nations like Mexico, just across the border from the U.S.

Mexico boasts the world’s 15th largest economy but 60% of its people are in the informal economy.Footnote 1 They pay no taxes but also have no medical, education or retirement benefits. They don’t exist on paper but their poverty is far too real and economists see no hope for them.

Given the horrors of runaway urbanization, China surprised the world when it announced its massive “National New-Type Urbanization Plan, 2014–2020”, with a goal of moving 100 million people from rural areas to cities by 2020, and 250 million by 2026. But unlike in other nations, China’s urbanization is planned with precision as the next step in alleviating rural and urban poverty—and it offers some lessons to help the rest of the world escape an almost apocalyptic scenario.

China’s improved rural living conditions over recent decades have helped slow urbanization and even in some cases helped reverse it. But some areas such as areas of Ningxia, Gansu or Yunnan have such poor natural conditions that workers are thankful for government sponsored programs to guarantee reliable, well-paid jobs and safe living conditions in cities. The problem with this strategy is that it sometimes separates families—hence China’s move to help rural families relocate to cities.

But can Chinese cities absorb 100 million people without spawning the slums and poverty seen in other nations? I had my own doubts until 2002, when I helped Xiamen compete in The International Awards for Livable Communities (Livcom) in Stuttgart, Germany.

I had witnessed Xiamen’s dramatic transformation over 14 years but until I spent eight months preparing for the competition, I had no idea of the complex, holistic long-term plans and strategies behind the city’s success. I was not surprised when one of the six international judges told me, “Xiamen is not only No. 1 but No. 2 is far behind.”

I assumed Xiamen’s success was unique in China until I helped Quanzhou compete in the 2003 competition in the Netherlands. Our neighbor 60 km to the north, Quanzhou was the start of the ancient Maritime Silk Road and Xi Jinping’s inspiration for the Belt and Road Initiative. Called Zayton by the Arabs, Quanzhou was the greatest port in the Middle Ages:

And I assure you that for one shipload of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere, destined for Christendom, there come a hundred such, aye and more too, to this haven of Zayton; for it is one of the two greatest havens in the world for commerce.

The Travels of Marco Polo

But modern Quanzhou people are as formidable as their seafaring forebears.

How Could Quanzhou Win the Gold?

Quanzhou not only won the gold in 2003 but also landed a second gold for heritage management. I was on cloud nine until reporters in Quanzhou asked me as soon as I stepped off the plane, “How on earth could Quanzhou win the gold?”.

I was shocked, but a year earlier I’d been just as ignorant as they were of what it takes to make a livable city, so I quickly wrote a newspaper article explaining why Quanzhou well deserved its double golds.

Part of the problem was translation. Livcom was translated into Chinese as “International Garden City Awards”, so Chinese, like many foreigners, shared the misconception that Livcom was about flowers and gardens, but landscaping was one of six categories that went into the holistic creation of a humane, livable community. And Chinese cities, as I discovered, excelled in all six categories because their urban development was planned, not piecemeal as in many other countries.

Does China Have Tall Buildings?

I was proud when a European leader said in the Netherlands in 2003, “We need to learn how to get community involvement like the Chinese do.” In 2005, a Canadian mayor in Spain said, “Chinese cities are so creative at solving the problems we all face.” But I was reminded in 2007 in London that the world still had much to learn about China when a well-traveled, university-educated European mayor said, “I did not know that China had tall buildings.”

Over the following decade, all but one Chinese city I worked with won the gold, and three won double golds, but after the first couple of cities I was no longer surprised. The more I learned, the more impressed I became at the consistency of urban practice across the entire country. National, provincial and municipal plans were thoroughly coordinated and integrated, though each city had leeway to incorporate unique elements of their geography, climate, history and culture.

I slowly discovered that China tackled urbanization with as much precision as it did rural poverty, but with 1.4 billion people, it could not afford to do otherwise. The consequences of failure would be catastrophic. But I also discovered, to my dismay, that cities in other countries did not have such farsighted urban strategies. When an Australian leader said, “I’m so surprised China has cities like this,” I wanted to reply, “I’m so surprised the rest of the world does not have cities like China’s!”.

I could write an entire book on how Chinese cities uniformly excelled in all six Livcom categories, but below are just a few examples to prove that China, unlike the rest of the world, is not only coping with urbanization but actually capitalizing upon it to improve lives in both city and country. My hope is that the rest of the world will take heart and learn from China’s example.

Livcom Category One: Landscape Management

It was challenging on Xiamen, a small island, to improve the infrastructure while preserving its pristine “garden island” environment, but Xiamen did so by building miles of tunnels through its hills to create a largely invisible highway network all the way from my university to the airport and beyond. Xiamen also built gardens and parks with vast parking areas and shopping centers, and used “vertical greenery” (plants on walls, bridges, roofs). The statistics speak for themselves. From 1980 to 2001, even as Xiamen’s skyscrapers mushroomed and the population more than tripled from 491,000 to 1,651,000, urban green space grew from 13 to 35.7%.

Quanzhou’s GDP averaged 26% annual growth from 1992–2002, yet urban green space doubled from 16.1 to 31.2% even as the city built 115 km of new roads (90% of which were green belts). In 2002, Quanzhou received the U.N.’s top 40 “Dubai International Award for Best Practices in Improving the Living Environment”.

Changxing City’s green coverage doubled from 21.1% in 2003 to 43% in 2008 and public park green space per capita grew from 2.2 squ. m in 1998 to 20 squ. m in 2008. Even the entire roof of Changxing’s city hall is a beautifully curved expanse of lush green lawn.

Beijing’s Dongcheng District, which competed in 2010, managed to expand green coverage from 35% in 2005 to 41.9% in 2009—amazing given the constraints in the nation’s capital.

Livcom Category Two: Heritage Management

I was amazed to learn that even little Xiamen island has 139 protected heritage sites, including a 1,300-year-old temple and China’s oldest Protestant Church. Chinese cities protect and promote numerous forms of intangible cultural heritage—martial arts, Chinese paper cutting, Kung Fu tea ceremonies, Chinese hand puppets and marionettes, Chinese opera, calligraphy, dragon dancing and dragon boat racing. And most cities that I visited had had primary to high school textbooks of both national and local heritage, including the heritage of local minorities. Each city had numerous museums (17 in Xiamen alone), but even more creative was the extensive use of open-air displays of history and heritage so people could enjoy history in daily life even without visiting museums.

Quanzhou’s restoration of Zhongshan Rd., which 1,000 years ago was considered the richest street in the world, won the UNESCO Asia Pacific Cultural Heritage 2001 Award of Merit. Changxing spends 3% of local revenues on heritage management, including its 1250 years of silk and tea, and its schools teach the children folk opera, dragon dancing and Chinese chess and Go.

Livcom Category Three: Environmentally Sensitive Practices

Xiamen spent over 2% of its GDP on environmental protection (and Nanjing, one of China’s ancient capitals, spends 3.5%). As former Xiamen Mayor Hong Yongshi told me, “We’re not following the Western model of destroying the environment to develop and then repair it. We’ll protect the environment as we grow.” Over a 20-year period, Xiamen was No. 1 in growth and No. 2 in greening for cities of its size. Of China’s 27 national indexes for environmental protection model cities, 23 were developed in Xiamen. Xiamen banned DDT and BHC in 1985, and promotes biological pest control (which Chinese first used at least 1,700 years ago). Beijing Dongcheng District cut pesticide use by 50% by planting 95% indigenous drought-resistant species and using biological pest control. Not only many cities have 12 years of environmental study texts and programs for children but many of them involve the children in designing and implementing their own programs.

Chinese cities’ eco-innovations seemed endless. Songjiang low-flush toilets saved 720,000 tons of water annually. Most cities used solar heating and street lamps. Some recycled waste into flooring, construction materials and waste cans. Organic garbage was transformed into safe, organic livestock feed. Gray water is recycled for parks irrigation. Wujin, which spends 3% of its GDP on the environment, safely incinerates garbage to produce electricity, transforms silt into construction bricks and fuel, recycles straw to produce 4% of China’s laminated boards, and uses bio-gas to generate rural electricity.

Changxing requires that all new structures be built with energy-efficient windows and doors and thermal materials, many of which are locally produced from recycled wood and bamboo.

Nanjing, with a population of 10 million, spent 3.5% of its GDP on the environment and cut the use of all energy by 50% between 2006 and 2010.

Livcom Category Four: Community Involvement

Foreign leaders’ most common question for me was, “How on earth do they get such broad community participation in everything?” Since the internet’s availability in the 1990s, Chinese cities have had e-government websites with real-time updates on key issues and numerous avenues for public feedback. As a result, many urban innovations are bottom-up initiatives by citizens. Xiamen’s mayor’s hotline became a model for the entire country, with its strict deadlines for responses and emphasis on transparency, accessibility and involvement.

Chinese are especially keen on environmental, cultural, sports and educational initiatives. Citizens will plant a tree at the drop of a hat—or for birthdays, weddings and anniversaries. Quanzhou volunteers planted almost 6 million trees from 1998 to 2002, and Changxing volunteers planted 30% of the 11,869,000 trees planted from 2003 to 2008. Volunteers also provide free medical care for senior citizens or disadvantaged residents, free legal service and medical care for migrant workers unsure of their rights, free classes and training. Rural/urban cooperation programs are also increasingly popular. I’ve met many teens like the girl at New Channel in Beijing who volunteers for online math tutoring of rural children.

Livcom Category Five: Healthy Lifestyle

Urbanites the world over face the same health issues caused by aging populations, over-crowding, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, poor diet, etc. But Chinese philosophy and medicine has for over 2,000 years emphasized prevention over cure through a healthy lifestyle—a notion that has caught on in the West only during the past couple of decades. Many cities not only provide free health checkups but also promote healthy lifestyles through free courses in traditional cultural arts and practices—everything from martial arts and dragon dances to basketball, soccer, volleyball, cycling, sailing, wind surfing, hiking and mountain climbing, marathons and triathlons.

Livcom Category Six: Future Planning

As an Englishman said in 2017, the U.S. and China’s biggest difference is that one is run by lawyers and the other by engineers. But in spite of the “engineer leaders” proven prowess, they don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Every city I visited had sent delegates to other cities in China or abroad to “learn the best from the best”. Urban teams learned city management from Paris, France; cultural preservation from Venice, Italy; water environment treatment from Sydney, Australia; urban architecture from Aberdeen, Scotland; environmental sanitation from Singapore; waste water management from German cities. And their visionary long-term plans were often developed in partnership with leading global firms such as RIA (Japan), Sarl Frederic Rolland International (France), KOLL (USA), HRP (Australia), SANCHO-MADRIDEJOS (Spain) and GN (USA).

And sometimes the way forward was backward. In 1988, bicycles were luxuries. A decade later, everyone wanted cars. Today, healthy clean cycling is making a comeback as cities design self-contained communities so everything is within a bike’s ride on designated bike lanes. Wujin boasts that even police ride bicycles. I asked how cops on bikes could catch a thief in a car? They reassured me that Wujin criminals have promised to ride bicycles to give the police a chance to catch them.

Nowadays, of course, most people don’t own a bike. We use our mobile phones to rent everything from bicycles to umbrellas on a rainy day.

Precision Planning or Piecemeal Initiatives?

In summary, urbanization is inevitable in today’s world, but whether it leads to apocalyptic dystopias like the UN’s projections for Lagos, Nigeria or Delhi, India, depends entirely upon world leaders’ resolve and determination to attack the problem head-on—and not with a hodgepodge of piecemeal initiatives but precision planning and accountability as China has demonstrated with its precision poverty alleviation, or precision urban planning—or even its precision epidemic alleviation during the COVID-19 crisis.

Even as I write this, China is handling the pandemic with unwavering resolve, regardless of economic cost, because the priority today, as when New China was founded in 1949, is that most basic of human rights—life. But this people-first conviction predates even New China’s founding in 1949, when Chinese leaders first voiced the Chinese Dream of a moderately prosperous society in which no one was left behind.

Chinese leaders’ passion for their people goes back at least 2,500 years to the days of Confucius, from whom came the idea of a meritocracy of scholar bureaucrats who were morally mandated to prepare themselves as well as possible to serve China’s millions to the utmost of their ability. And whether 1,000 years ago or today, they’ve proven they are quite capable.

I hope the rest of the world can take heart and learn from their example.