SIZING UP CHINA'S CITIES

The capitol of China's Jiangsu province, Nanjing, a city none would call competitive, hosted this year's international forum on urban competitiveness. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences ranked the city in the 50th percentile out of 500 in the most recent Global Urban Competitiveness Report. The city's rank is based on output per person and person per square kilometer, its number of multinational companies and a number of other factors. Rapid urbanization and urban progress prompted Boston Consulting Group to put out a report that encouraged businessmen to look at emerging markets in respect to cities rather than countries. With urbanization being such a trend, in the year 2020 a company will have to be in 212 of China's cities to reach 80% of its middle class. In 2005, a company had to be in only 60 cities to reach the same population. Some scholars say China's cities are too small to soak up all the benefits that residents and businesses get in their relation to others, such as customers, skilled labor, and specialized suppliers. According to the rank-size rule, the largest city will have double the population of the 2nd largest, 3X more people than the 3rd largest, and so on. However, in China,the smallest cities are too dispersed and the larger ones are too even in size. This all began in the 90's when China's small cities were growing quicker than the big ones. China's rulers aren't too shabby on the idea of mega-cities, but do, however, like urbanization. They feel this makes it less complicated for its citizens of rural areas tomove to a mid-sized city rather than a larger one. Some scholars believe that the economy of China would benefit from stretching out its cities and the country could do this by expanding higher education. This would bring its young population to the cities for school, jobs, and hopefully, them staying.
i am not exactly sure what to think about this article. All of the other articles I have read on urbanization view it as a potential problem, but this one is asking for it directly. I guess if it were another country, I would probably agree with its views on expanding the cities, but China already has an overpopulation problem. why would they want more people to move into the cities? if everyone in China is a city dweller, who"s going to take care of their crops?
http://www.economist.com/node/17043174?story_id=17043174