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Transportation
Transportation in the mainland of the People's Republic of China has improved remarkably since the late 1990s as part of a government effort to link the entire nation through a series of expressways known as the National Trunk Highway System (NTHS). Between 2001 and 2005, more than 25,000 km (16,000 mi) of expressways were built in China for a total of 41,000 km (25,000 mi), second only to the United States total Private car ownership is increasing at an annual rate of 15%, though remains uncommon in large part due to government policies designed to make car ownership expensive through the use of taxes and toll roads.

Air travel has increased considerably, but remains out of reach for most ordinary mainland Chinese as long distance transportation is still dominated by railways and charter bus systems.

Cities are increasingly building subways or light rail systems, such as in Shanghai and Beijing. Hong Kong has one of the most developed transport systems in the world.

Urbanization
In the past decade, China's cities expanded at an average rate of 10% annually. The country's urbanization rate increased from 17.4% to 41.8% between 1978 and 2005, a scale unprecedented in human history. Caught in between the urban and the rural are the 80 to 120 million migrant workers who work part-time in the major cities of China and return home to the countryside periodically with their earnings.

Today, the People's Republic of China has dozens of major cities with one million or more long-term residents, including 3 global cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.

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