That is true without question.

((The government wants to create a domestic consumer market in China for the goods produced by the country’s burgeoning manufacturing sector which today is largely export driven.))

That is highly problematic. Yes the manufacturing sector is burgeoning and largely export driven. But the main reason for that seems to be dirt-cheap competent labor. China can only become an urban consumer society by vastly increasing wages. If China vastly increases wages it will lose much of its production costs advantage in global trade. Seems highly unlikely China’s senior leadership is planning that.

Planet wide, hominids increasingly live in a world of electronic virtual reality. The truth of human consciousness is that all intelligence is artificial and all reality is virtual. The rural subsistence peasant in China will be transferred to an urban concrete virtual reality chamber. Robotic machines will work the land from which he was displaced (which will be the case throughout the world). While on the land his peasant body/brain system was lost to the interests of the state and to the world economy. In his concrete urban cubical, strong AI virtual persons can meld with his actual body brain and produce economic value. It’s just another step down the path to Borgworld.

An over-supply of labor in industrial centers puts downward pressure on wages, lowers production costs, and perpetuates China’s global dominance in manufactured goods. The transformation of subsistence farmer to AI host/industrial worker will need electricity, and lots of it. Guess where that electricity will be coming from? One should also note that lime roasting for concrete cement is a major source of atmospheric carbon. The peasant on the land is nearly carbon neutral; in the city he is not only an economic unit, he is also a carbon producer.