Luo Shucai, formerly a farmer, now is enjoying a city life with his wife in southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality, not only possessing a set of apartment but running a home appliances repair shop in a newly-built residential area.

Benefiting from China's urbanization, more and more local farmers like Luo have moved to cities and settled down there, living richer lives than before.

"Urbanization can help farmer immigrants relieve poverty and gradually make them rich," Tao Siliang, secretary general of China Association of Mayors, said at the on-going fifth Asia Pacific Mayors Summit. Tao even bet some of them would become middle class in the future.

Keshav Varma, director of East Asia Department of City Development Bureau under World Bank, estimated over 300 million Chinese farmers will move to cities in next 15 years.

By then, the total urban population will rise from current 524 million to over 800 million, said Varma at the summit held in Chongqing from Oct. 12 to 14.

"It is a wise decision for the Chinese government to enrich farmers via lifting up the urbanization level," said Beverly O'Neil, president of US Conference of Mayors.

The just-closed fifth plenary session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) vowed to promote urbanization gradually.

Chinese President Hu Jintao also urged to continue the country's urbanization in a healthy and orderly way presiding over the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau last month.

"Urbanization is the ultimate trend for economic and social development, as well as an important symbol for industrialization and modernization," he said. "China is in the crucial stage of its urbanization process."

According to Tao Siliang, China's urbanization level now has risen from 18.9 percent in 1990 to last year's 40 percent based on a year-on-year growth rate of around 1 percent, and is expected to reach 60 percent by 2020.

Tao gave an estimation that hundreds of small cities will emerge and offer habitation for 18 more million farmers annually in the next 15 years.

Statistics showed that fixed assets investment in cities exceeded 2 trillion yuan (US$247 billion) resulting in 1.6 billion square meters of housing added each year from 1998 to 2004. So far, more than 80 percent of urban residents possess their own apartments, with per capita housing of over 23 square meters.

"The increase of the urbanization level can help narrow the rich-poor gap and gain coordination of urban and rural development," said Zhou Qingxing, professor of sociology with Chongqing University.

"China's urbanization process, along with the interrelated manufacturing industry and consumption market can offer huge opportunities for both urban and rural residents as well as investors from other countries," Desley Boyle, environment minister of Queensland State, Australia, said at the summit.

As the first of its kind ever held in China and Asia as well, 124 mayors or their delegates from a total of 41 countries and regions attended the three-day summit.

(Xinhua News Agency October 14, 2005)