Key indicators for Pre-Warning risks associated with urbanization in China

China has focused on pre-warning risks in its national policies, under the pressure of increasing risks associated with urbanization. While developing restrictive indicators assists the government in risk management, tracking the risks associated with urbanization and identifying their critical points remains relatively rare. We addressed this gap by presenting a general framework to quantify the potential risks of urbanization. Within this framework, early warning indicators were selected from four risk dimensions associated with urbanization in China, which include population development, economic growth, resource sustainability, and environmental protection. We then analyzed the historical characteristics of these indicators from 1980 to 2020 using the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter method and predicted the trend from 2021 to 2030 using the Auto-Regressive Moving Average (ARMA) model. The findings were as follows: (1) A complete cycle was observed for most indicators within 10 years, and cyclical fluctuations were sensitive to changes in national policies and the external environment, with tipping points after 1–2 years. (2) Certain indicators showed risk warning signals in the next cycle, including total fertility rate, urban unemployment rate, and urban water consumption. The prediction results of these indicators provided thresholds for policy intervention. (3) As indicated by the warning signals, negative population growth, rising unemployment, and the gap between supply and demand of water resources were the main risk factors for urbanization in China. Some policy suggestions were provided for risk response, including dealing with women's job security and work-life balance, ensuring employment opportunities for vulnerable groups, accelerating the upgrading of the tertiary industry to expand domestic market demand, and strictly controlling the consumption of limited resources. These results present contribute to the formulation of national urbanization policies and development plans.