Abstract: Starting with the flow of rural population into urban areas, the author adopts a comparative approach to study urbanization in modern China. Arguing that urbanization in modern China was quite different from that in the West, the author makes three observations:1)migration to urban areas in the West was due to the “pull”of the city, while Chinese urbanization was due to the “push” of the countryside;2)urbanization in the West was coincidental with industrialization, and the two phenomena spiraled upward, while in China urbanization was not tied to industrialization and sometimes occurred without it;3)urbanization in modern China has propelled social and economic development in both rural and urban areas, but with much more suffering and at greater cost. The author concludes that the social character resulting from the “semi-feudal and semi-colonial China” determined the historical characteristics of urbanization in modern China.