The country's urban population was forecast to expand from the 572 million seen in 2005, to 926 million in 2025 and 1 billion in 2030.

Of the 350 million people added to the country's urban population by 2025, more than 240 million would be migrants from the rural regions.

And by 2025, there would be 221 cities with populations of 1 million each. Meanwhile, urban areas would reportedly generate 95 percent of the country's GDP, up from the current 75 percent.

"Continued growth of China's cities will ensure that China meets its target of quadrupling per capita GDP from 2000 levels by 2020," the report stated.

But it also warned that urban population growth would put pressure on many cities, including the challenge of managing more people, securing sufficient funds for social services and dealing with demand and supply of land, energy, water and the environment.

Urban consumption, for one, would hit 21.7 trillion yuan ($3 trillion) in 2025, taking 33 percent of GDP, compared with 25 percent in 2005, the report stated. Chinese population experts have also said that the country would reap greater economic benefits and improve energy efficiency by improving its urbanization pattern.

"Urbanization is a significant sign of modernization in China," Mu Guangzong, a professor of the population research institute under Peking University, told China Daily in a phone interview yesterday.

One problem currently facing the country's pattern of urbanization is the imbalance in the distribution of the population, Mu said.

"People prefer to move to economically developed cities in the east or central regions, and that would slow down the development in the west of the country," Mu said.

Mu also warned that the labor shortage in rural areas, a side effect of urbanization, is creating a widening gap in the economic development of cities and the countryside.

"Too many people are striving for better lives in cities, but an overwhelming density of population actually worsens their living standard," Mu said.

Faced with the increasing competition for skilled labor, migrants without adequate education and skills are unable to find jobs to sustain a higher cost of living in the cities they go to, Mu said.

These migrants end up seeking temporary shelter at the fringes of cities, where there is a real danger of higher poverty and crime rates, Mu said.