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It's still wrong to call a country with over half its population in cities "rural at its core". It isn't transitioning from a 'rural era' either. It's more urbanized than Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia, and several other developed countries[1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country




Even your Wikipedia link confirms what I said earlier. China is the bottom half for urbanization globally. Morocco is more urbanized than China, and I've never heard of anyone describing Morocco as an urbanized country. So this is really your bias at work. I have travelled in China several times and as soon as you go outside of the large cities, you'll see great poverty and rural life everywhere. It's changing, but it will take time to move hundred of millions of people to the cities.


It doesn't confirm that China is 'rural at its core' at all. When more than half the world lives in urban centers then being in the bottom half doesn't mean anything. If over half a country lives in urban centers then you simply can't call the country 'rural at its core'. It has a massive rural population, but it isn't 'rural at its core'.

To make an edit: I think we're arguing over semantics of terms at this point. I don't think we're actually disagreeing about anything important. I never asked for China to be called urbanized (although I would use that term if forced to use one or the other), just that calling it 'rural at its core' doesn't hold up anymore. If you still think that statement holds true, then I'm sorry that we're going to have different definitions of that term.




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