China is in the midst of the fastest and most large-scale urbanization the world has ever seen. Chinese officials estimate that they're establishing 20 new cities a year, and have been for a couple of decades. That means there are scores of Chinese cities with populations of a million or more people that you've probably never heard of - and hundreds more growing fast.

In Part IV of our series on China's urbanization, The World's Mary Kay Magistad offers of one of these up-and-coming cities, the fur and leather center of Xinji a couple hundred miles south of Beijing.

All photos: Mary Kay Magistad

Magistad: A couple of decades ago, Xinji was a dusty little town of about 45,000 people. Since then, the population has more than tripled, and Xinji's leaders are dreaming big - as some of the city's monuments suggest. There's what looks like a replica of the Eiffel Tower . There's a huge metallic sphere on a black tripod - in honor of this area's centuries-old fur and leather industry. And in the middle of a traffic-circle that joins broad boulevards, there's a futuristic twisting blue tower, dubbed the " Excellent Fur Exhibition Center."

Excellent Fur Exhibition Center

Magistad: Zhang Yanchao likes what he sees. He's a business entrepreneur, who was born here in Xinji 37 years ago:

Zhang: "When I was small, Xinji was small too. Since then, it has developed fast, and it has developed well, and the future will be even better."

Magistad: Certainly, Zhang's future seems bright. He runs a computer training school and he sells fur and leather for export to Russia and Central Asia. The purple and lime-green tinged fur jackets are a particular hit in those markets. Zhang used some of his profits a decade ago to buy a home - and since then, its value has tripled:

Zhang: "It's a nice place - lots of room for my family of three. But the newer apartment towers are even nicer, more spacious and beautiful. So I might move."

Zhang Yanchao with Xinji's "Eiffel Tower"

Magistad: But not from Xinji - not when he can watch his old hometown transform into a modern city. It's the optimism and energy of people like Zhang that's helping to drive the urbanization of China 's countryside. Villages are becoming towns, and towns are becoming cities.

They're linked up by China 's equivalent of the US interstate system, built at warp speed over the last few years and already at 36,000 miles. All this is visible proof that China 's ancient peasant-based economy is irrevocably changing into an industrial, urbanized one.

Mars: "The new cities are a sort of reality check to many Chinese that the dream - is - real, that it's actually finally happening."

Magistad: Neville Mars is a Dutch architect and city planning. He set up the Dynamic City Foundation in Beijing in response to China 's announcement a few years back that China would be building an average of 20 new cities a year until 2020 - more than 400 in total:

Mars: "The reality is, the 400 cities goal that started this project off can't really be answered. It's understandable that we can't design 400 cities at once. It's very difficult if not impossible to just design one. The goal really emerged as a social statement, to accommodate the migrant flows from the countryside to the cities."

Magistad: And China 's hundreds of new cities are a mixed bag when it comes to accommodating and serving their growing populations, says Lu Dadao. He's president of the Geographical Society of China, and has advised the national government on issues related to urbanization:

Lu: "Cities are growing so fast that they aren't keeping up, in providing new residents with what they need. Some of them spend money on impressive government buildings and broad boulevards, instead of improving the quality of city life - providing enough schools, health care, and a good environment."

Magistad: Certainly, Xinji has the impressive government buildings and boulevards, and smog does hang thick in the air. But then, it's thick over the entire 200 mile stretch from here to Beijing . This is one of China 's industrial belts, where pollution is so bad leaders have ordered factories to cut back production before and during next month's Olympics, so the athletes don't collapse.

That'll provide a brief respite for Xinji's residents. But already, some say, both air and water pollution here have already improved - if only in relative terms. Farmer Yang Ping grows wheat in the shadow of a leather tanning district, on Xinji's southeast side. He pauses from throwing handfuls of fertilizer on his crop, and almost laughs when I ask how the water is around here:

Farmer Yang

Yang: "The water from the factory used to come out black, and we couldn't use it at all. Now, they've cleaned it up some, so I use it on my crops. Sometimes, it still turns the leaves yellow, and I don't get a very good harvest, but it's better than it used to be. "

Magistad: Inside a nearby leather tanning factory, general manager Xie Xiaoda sits behind his oversized desk. He takes a long drag on his cigarette, and says, of course his factory cares about the environment. Why, he says, his company and several others even chipped in together recently to install a water cleansing and recycling system. He neglects to say it's because the government ordered them to do it: Xie says his factory has cut down on water use, improved the quality of discharged water - and his company still made a 20 percent profit last year, exporting mainly to Europe .

Farmer Yang Ping doesn't know what that has to do with him. He says his water is sometimes still bitter when it comes out of the tap - and who know what kind of pollution is in it, or what kind of long-term damage it might do.

Yang: "I don't see how Xinji's development is helping me. A few people get rich, and the rest of us still have to struggle. That's how it always is."

Magistad: Yang has two sons who are now in high school. He says he'd like to see them go to college if they can, maybe get jobs in Xinji, if it continues to grow. Otherwise, he says, they'll probably head off to bigger cities, to build their lives. I wanted to ask Xinji's mayor what he's doing to help the city grow - but he declined. He sent a message through his staff, saying the city's not developed enough yet to receive a foreign journalist, and he'd let me know when it was. Of course, that clinched it - I had to come to Xinji and take a look.

Magistad: And parts of the city do seem to be coming along. The locals says the broad boulevards have more cars than they used to - even if there still aren't many. A few office towers have gone up - and some modern shopping malls.

Professor Marc Blecher of Oberlin College finds the opening of high-end shops a particularly interesting development. He and a colleague have been visiting Xinji, and charting its development, since the early '80s:

Blecher: "We were interested in the shopkeepers in these goo-tsy new stores, about what had attracted them to come. So we'd chat up owners of these new shops, which were selling high-end amenities for the new middle-class, fancy lamps and linens for your apartment and so on. What attracted them was, one the economy was growing fast, and two, the opportunity to educate your kids."

Magistad: That's because Xinji has made a point of building up good private and state schools, making itself a center of education as well as of fur and leather. That could be a smart play, positioning Xinji to phase out its more heavily polluting industries and move up into the services sector - once Xinji grows as a city. For now, parts of it still feel like they're just one step removed from the village.

Magistad: In this shabby, trash-strewn neighborhood, for instance, leather factory workers are shooting pool outside, on their break. Many of them say they want to move somewhere else. Xinji is at that awkward stage - kind of like a teenager who hasn't quite grown into his dad's suit - and meanwhile, smokes too much. But like so many other cities in China, it aspires to greater things. Its leaders are hoping that with good urban planning, the sheer momentum of the population's shift to cities, will guarantee Xinji's rise, and its future.

For The World, I'm Mary Kay Magistad , Xinji , Hebei province, China .