Prospect on China's Urban System by 2020: Evidence from the Prediction Based on Internal Migration Network

China's rapid urbanization has aroused substantial attention all over the world. Though there exists a strong connection between urban system and intercity migration, an overall prediction of China's urban population of all cities based on migration network has rarely been conducted. This study proposes an extended NEG (New Economic Geography) model to simulate China's urban system evolution with actual data and further predicts the future development of China's urban system under three different urbanization scenarios. We discover that China's future development trend is centralized urbanization dominated by large cities with a population of above 1 million. This prediction result is of great significance to provide scientific evidence for China's population flow management and new-type urbanization planning.