Urban aims may come at high cost

Risks are mounting as China's ambitious urbanization campaign moves further down the tracks.

For one thing, many county-level governments apparently view urban development as a cure-all to their industrial capacity woes. In fact, one steel executive in central China once said that even a 1-percent annual urban population growth rate would be enough to revive the steel industries.

Many local plans are also woefully impractical. Enlarging construction land and attaining municipal-level status look to be the top goals of many county-level officials.

But in order to do so, a county has to become a city and, in the process, set up economic zones that could cost tens of millions of yuan and eat away at valuable arable land. Considering that each zone can easily occupy 2 to 5 square kilometers, this could translate into a great deal of reclaimed land if scaled across the entire country. And this, of course, does not even take into consideration the billions of yuan in local debt that will be accrued to finance such endeavors.