The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978 endorsed Deng Xiaoping's programme of reform and opening, shifting priority from class struggle to economic construction. For cities this reopened markets, foreign investment and, over the following decade, urban land and housing reform, ending the productivist freeze on urban growth. It set the institutional stage for special economic zones, land finance and mass migration. The global layer notes the policy broadly; here it is read as the hinge of modern Chinese urbanisation.
It launched what the World Bank calls history's largest and fastest urbanisation, lifting China's urban share from under a fifth toward two thirds within four decades.
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