I mean i haven’t looked into the source but i assume it probably means not rural. This is an interesting point because of course we could go into more depth about the way that the US and China differ in their respective urban vs rural population distribution. China still has a larger proportion of its population living in rural areas than is the case in “developed” countries. And one of the major problems that China has been working on is solving the economic and infrastructure disparity between urban and rural. This is a huge task and one that is still ongoing. That being said the majority of China’s population is now living in urban areas, which is a big change from just 70 years ago when the majority was still rural. So while this graph doesn’t tell the whole picture it is still fairly representative. As for rural populations in the West, doing a proper analysis of their economic and class makeup is a whole topic into its own and is not as simple as one would think because on the one hand you do have many people in the US living in rural areas in fairly pronounced proverty conditions (Appalachia, Midwest, etc.) but you also have some quite affluent petty bourgeois farmers.
Indeed, there is a whole complex history behind this as these things are not static and change over time. Around the mid century there was a big shift in population in the US from urban to suburban which was not equally distributed across race and class lines. There were various reasons for this but certainly a major factor was the mass adoption of the automobile and the buildout of associated infrastructure.
So is a similar shift away from the urban eventually going to happen in China as high speed rail connectivity expands even into the most remote rural areas and as the buildout of general infrastructure continues? I’ve seen some indications that this is already happening to some degree, as digital infrastructure and the spread of e-commerce allows people to conduct economic activity without having to be physically located in urban centers.
For now it looks like the migration from rural to urban is still ongoing and overall stronger than the opposite trend, and it seems to me this will continue for a while, but eventually an inflection point may be reached.
What does urban mean and why is it sliced out to make the comparison?
I mean i haven’t looked into the source but i assume it probably means not rural. This is an interesting point because of course we could go into more depth about the way that the US and China differ in their respective urban vs rural population distribution. China still has a larger proportion of its population living in rural areas than is the case in “developed” countries. And one of the major problems that China has been working on is solving the economic and infrastructure disparity between urban and rural. This is a huge task and one that is still ongoing. That being said the majority of China’s population is now living in urban areas, which is a big change from just 70 years ago when the majority was still rural. So while this graph doesn’t tell the whole picture it is still fairly representative. As for rural populations in the West, doing a proper analysis of their economic and class makeup is a whole topic into its own and is not as simple as one would think because on the one hand you do have many people in the US living in rural areas in fairly pronounced proverty conditions (Appalachia, Midwest, etc.) but you also have some quite affluent petty bourgeois farmers.
Also with several rounds of white flight, there are a lot of petty b’s living in the blurry line between urban and rural
Indeed, there is a whole complex history behind this as these things are not static and change over time. Around the mid century there was a big shift in population in the US from urban to suburban which was not equally distributed across race and class lines. There were various reasons for this but certainly a major factor was the mass adoption of the automobile and the buildout of associated infrastructure.
So is a similar shift away from the urban eventually going to happen in China as high speed rail connectivity expands even into the most remote rural areas and as the buildout of general infrastructure continues? I’ve seen some indications that this is already happening to some degree, as digital infrastructure and the spread of e-commerce allows people to conduct economic activity without having to be physically located in urban centers.
For now it looks like the migration from rural to urban is still ongoing and overall stronger than the opposite trend, and it seems to me this will continue for a while, but eventually an inflection point may be reached.