1998年专八英语作文真题:城市化进程问题

Nowadays, with the rapid economic and industrial development, existing cities are growing faster in size, and meanwhile, new cities are steadily increasing in number. Despite the various profits urbanization has brought to our country, many problems turn up as a result in the process: environmental deterioration, warming climate, and housing insufficiency, to name just a few. Among them is a serious social problem I would like to draw your attention to - high unemployment in China. In the course of urbanization, a large amount of farmland has been quickly taken up by factories, housing, and expressways. This loss of arable land, plus the mechanization and modernization of agriculture, has created a huge excess labor force.Now, millions of farmers live on very small pieces of land that are sufficient to survive, but too small for modem agricultural production. The huge rural population in our country is linked to an economic activity, which could be accomplished by a fraction of the current agricultural labor force. In fact, it was estimated that in 1994 China had a surplus of about 200 million agricultural workers. Chinese experts estimated that by the year 2000 some.300.million farmers would not be needed in agriculture. If this number is correct, then China's rural under or unemployed would exceed the-total population of the United States of America. Admittedly, some agricultural surplus population was absorbed in the flourishing rural industries and moved to industrial centers nearby in the process of China's economic reforms. Also, there is a large demand for unskilled workers in certain economic sectors of big cities such as the urban construction industry, the electronics,textile industries and the service sector. However, these are not sufficient solutions to this unemployment problem. First, the labor surplus which further agricultural modernization increases far outnumber the job opportunities provided in cities. Second, the job competition in cities is getting fiercer with millions of lay-offs and graduates rushing into the labor market. Third, with a rather strict household registration system (hukou) ,which restrict farmer workers' many economic rights in cities, much of the labor force floating to .urban area would possibly flow back sooner or later. Thus, it is not hard to imagine how serious the unemployment problem would be in China if urbanization quickened its pace and kept biting off our farmland. From the above analysis, it can be easily seen that urbanization has posed a strong challenge to our economic and social development while bringing other troubles: the high employment threat. Though there is no easy or quick solution to such a complexity, our government and experts are trying hard to find ways to fight against it.