With its sustained and steady economic growth, China has opened the throttle on urbanization, said Vice Minister of Construction Qiu Baoxing on Tuesday.

Qiu told a press conference that both the size and number of cities and towns has continuously increased.

From 1978 to 2002, the level of urbanization in China climbed from 17.9 percent to 39.1 percent, said Qiu. The annual growth rate was 0.9 percentage points, two times the world average in the same period.

The Ministry of Construction reports that by the end of 2002, there were 660 cities and 20,600 administrative towns in China, with a total population of 502 million.

Qiu said that planning in the urban and rural areas-the basic means to guide and regulate construction and development--has played an active role in promoting economic and social development.

A working mechanism to guide such planning that fits China's situation has taken shape, said Qiu. He added that all the cities, most administrative towns and 70 percent of villages have made revisions to their master plans.

But Qiu noted that there are still some problems in urban and rural planning.

Instead of extravagant urban roads and squares, he said more convenient sports facilities should be an integral part of cities and towns.

"The facilities are fundamental to build bodies, improve quality of life and give people more leisure activities," Qiu said.

Qiu said urban planning authorities should carefully consider the facilities, considering the central government's efforts to prevent seizures of land during the urbanization process.

But he stressed the State Council's determination to stop construction of extravagant urban roads and squares.

"During the construction of these projects, other infrastructure is often demolished illegally and the construction workers often do not get paid on time," Qiu said.

Since earlier this year, several cabinet departments have worked on a campaign to change this trend. A nationwide audit has been conducted on road and square projects. Construction plans and worker payment schedules are inspected. The departments also capped the width of roads and the size of squares.

Cities with more than 2 million people will be permitted to construct a public square of 5 hectares at most, while the sizes for small, medium and large cities with fewer than 2 million are 1, 2 and 3 hectares.

Qiu said the majority of China's 660 cities and 2,200 county-level towns already have or are planning to build wide roads and lavish squares.

"We have strict planning standards for cities of various sizes, but they have been ignored for long time," said Qiu.

Rongcheng, a county-level city in eastern China's Shandong Province, is a typical case. It has a huge, 10-hectare square.

With China's rapid advances, economic development zones, real estate projects and urban projects are blossoming nationwide, Lin Yueqin, researcher with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told China Daily.

He said that under the current land management system, local governments buy land from farmers or urban residents at very low prices. But some local governments then sell the land to real estate developers at much higher prices. "Money has pushed local governments to ignore planning standards," said Lin.

So far, nearly half of China's 6,000 economic zones have been determined to be illegal.

The ministry has taken back the land used by more than 2,600 such zones this year. Most of those are still unused.

Despite the overall belief that China's real estate sector is developing healthily, Qiu's ministry has decided to set up a nationwide information and warning network within two years to prevent overheating in the housing industry.

The warning system has already been put into operation in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, where most housing prices have topped 3,000 yuan (US$361) per square meter.

Said Qiu, "The building of the warning network is one of the planned measures to oversee the real estate industry, which has gradually become market-oriented."

The national system will be based on data from various city-level systems and cover 35 major cities across the nation, including Hangzhou.

(Xinhua News Agency & China Daily May 19, 2004)