Majority of Chinese now live in cities

大部分中国人在城市生活

BEIJING — China’s urban population exceeded its rural population in 2011 for the first time in the nation’s history, the government’s National Bureau of Statistics reported, continuing a trend that has helped drive its rapid economic growth but poses an increasingly difficult social transition for scores of millions of Chinese.

【北京】据国家统计局报告，2011年中国的城市人口的数量在历史上第一次超越了农村人口，这个趋势推动了中国经济的快速增长，同时也使数以百万计的中国人面临日益困难的社会转型。

The statistics bureau stated that China counted 690.79 million urbanites at the year’s end, an increase of 21 million, compared to 656.56 million rural-dwellers, down 14.56 million.

统计局表示：到今年年末中国有6.9079亿城市城市人口，比去年增长210万，而农村居民为6.5656亿，较去年少145.6万。

The shift furnishes a ready labor force for the factories that power China’s export-based economy, and better wages in cities have contributed to raising hundreds of millions from poverty.

这种转移为驱动中国出口型经济的工厂提供了易得的劳动力，同时，城市的更高薪水促使数以亿计的人口脱贫。

But it also has fueled an urban underclass of migrants and jobless without proper housing and social services, and the hollowing of the countryside has left the elderly without family close by and deprived farms of needed labor.

但它也催生了由移民及失业人口组成的城市下层阶级，他们没有适宜的住房及社会服务，同时，农村劳动力的淘空导致了老年人身边没有家人并夺走了农业必需的劳动力。

Barely 10 percent of Chinese lived in cities when Communist forces took control of the Chinese mainland in 1949, Reuters reported. Globally, about 51 percent of people now live in cities, including 51.27 percent of Chinese citizens. The United States counts 82 percent of its residents as city-dwellers.

路透社报道，1949年，当共产党军队控制中国大陆时，仅仅有10%的中国人生活在城市。在全球范围内，当今有51%的人居住在城市，其中包括51.27%的中国人。美国将其82%的居民计为城市人口。