INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2017.1353411 Exposure and resilience of China’s cities to loods and droughts: a double-edged sword Jialiang Cai , Matti Kummu, Venla Niva, Joseph H. A. Guillaume and Olli Varis Water & Development Research Group, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland ABSTRACT China’s rapid urbanization in areas prone to lood or drought events can be seen as a double-edged sword. Urbanization enlarges the population exposed to these hazards, but the resulting socio-economic development also helps build resilience. This article quantiies lood occurrence, drought severity, and related resilience in 81 cities in Mainland China. The extent of lood exposure was notable, both in absolute terms as well as in relation to the drought-prone urban population. China needs to integrate urban lood/drought policy making with sustainable urbanization policy making to best contribute to minimizing lood and drought risks in its cities. Introduction The world’s rural population is currently almost steady, and global population growth occurs mostly in urban areas (United Nations, 2015; Wu, Xiang, & Zhao, 2014). Consequently, urban population growth is, in proportional terms, much faster than global average population growth. In the midst of a rapid social transition, China has been urbanizing at an unprece- dented rate, with soaring economic and social development since the 1978 economic reform (Bai, Shi, & Liu, 2014; Wang, 2014; Tan, Xu, & Zhang, 2016). It is one of the countries in which urban growth clearly exceeds total population growth, and the rural population has been shrinking rapidly. In 2013, China’s urbanization level (percentage of urban population) sur- passed the world average for the irst time (Huang, Yan, & Wu, 2016). Urbanization in 2015 (56%) was 3.1 times that in 1978 (18%), with the present growth rate at approximately 20 million people per year (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2015; United Nations, 2015). World Urbanization Prospects (United Nations, 2015) projected that China’s urbanization will surpass 75% by 2050. Facing rapid, ongoing demographic, societal and economic changes, it is crucial for China to strive towards sustainable urbanization. Since China’s 10th Five-Year Plan on national economy and social development was set in force in 2001, a growing empha- sis on sustainability as a guiding principle of its urbanization has been clearly visible at the policy level (Cai, Varis, & Yin, 2017; Cosier & Shen, 2009; Huang, 2006; Li et al., 2009; Liu & Qin, 2016; Wu et al., 2014). However, given the remaining massive environmental issues of China’s © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group KEYWORDS Flood; drought; urbanization; resilience; exposure; policy; China ARTICLE HISTORY Received 26 February 2017 Accepted 29 June 2017 CONTACT Olli Varis olli.varis@aalto.i The supplemental material for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2017.1353411. Downloaded by [Aalto-yliopiston kirjasto] at 03:52 14 August 2017