How to define the city size in China? A review over a century from 1918 to 2020

Abstract

Accurately defining the size of cities is essential for urban studies. As the country with the world's largest urban population, China has experienced numerous changes in its definition of city size. We carefully collected and analyzed China's city size based on authoritative population census or recorded data from 1918 to 2020. Our key findings are as follows. (1) Over the past century, the administrative proper of Chinese cities has seen a marked expansion, from its proximity to urban entities to the concept of an extended region. The definition of city size in China was optimized from the total population within the city proper based on the administrative boundary to that within the city entity based on the urbanized built-up area. (2) There are two main aspects to optimizing China's definition of city size. The first is the use of township- or village-level administrative units to match the city entities. The second is the use of residential population rather than the traditional hukou registration population to indicate size. (3) China's city size distribution based on the city entity has shifted from being predominantly small- and medium-sized cities to being dominated by large cities. Cities with larger populations a century ago, mainly located in coastal urban agglomerations and inland provincial capitals, still had a strong size advantage a century later. The experiences of optimizing the definition of city size in China offer implications for other rapidly urbanizing countries and for international city size comparisons.