关键词: 城市化, 外资, 珠江三角洲

Abstract: Ever since the late 1970s, foreign capital has become an active agent in economic growth and urban development in many developing countries. This is a product of the globalization of production and other economic activities inspired by the New International Division of Larbour (NIDL) and a new and positive altitude of most developing countries towards the utilization of foreign capital for their own development. With active inflow of foreign capital, not only the local economy of some developing countries has been drastically transformed, their urbanization has been transformed by this new dynamic as well. In this paper, such an urbanization process which bears improtant imprint of foreign capital, is labelled as exo (genous) urbanization. It is believed that the volume, duration, nature and consequence of foreign capital there have been such that it has produced the only case of exo urbanization in the Zhujiang River Delta of the PRC in 1990. The paper analyses the process as it happened in 1978～1993. 1978 marks the start of the new Open Door and Reform of the PRC which turns the Zhujiang River Delta from a slow growth area under central planning into a fast economic take off area where market mechanism and foreign captital have played the predominant role in its economy. It is found that foreign capital has transformed the economy of the Delta in the period from a traditional rural one into one which is largely urban and export oriented. The new economy is predominated by light manufacture with both foreign and domestic funds and market orientations. Yet foreign capital and foreign market have the larger role. Drastic growth of this new economy not only has led to rural urban migration within the Delta, in the later part of the period, intra provincial and inter provincial medium to long distance migration has also been induced. Many of the new migrants are young and unskilled cheap labour required by the rapidly expanding manufacture and service sectors of the new economy. Exo urbanization in the Delta is found to show a number of characteristics. There is a close causal relationship between urbanization and the inflow of foreign capital as well as the new industrial sector growth that it has espoused. Secondly, the rate of urbanization is hectic, and is accompanied by the more hectic expansion of the built-up area, to a great extent, caused by the rapid expansion of land for urban and industrial uses. Thirdly, urban growth happens more in the small and medium urban places as well as ‘rural areas’ (or rural urban transition areas) where land is cheaper and official control over labour, environmental pollution and general bureaucracy are more laxed. Thus it has led to the faster growth of smaller urban centers than the larger centers. In the case of the Delta, the rank size curve has become smoother and the primacy of Guangzhou, the provincial capital has declined. Fourthly, exo urbanization shows a spatial bias towards the demarcation zone in the Delta, a clear response to the pull of the market and the main source of capital, i.e., Hong Kong. Exo urbanization is thus marked by different from other new phenomena described by recent studies in and around large metropolitan area of the developing countries, such as the extended urbanization. However, the social, political and environmental implication of the process needs to be further studied and its substantiation is yet insufficiently explored.

Key words: urbanization, foreign capital, Zhujiang River Delta