Here's the list!

[Randy W]

. . . of Chinese cities with populations larger than Liverpool.

 

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/tools/tables/embed/index.html?spreadsheet=1V1bf-50nK90qUL_kDQM6veDixXvcT0LDxq5uS5FqIEg

 

More than 100 Chinese cities now above 1 million people

 

 

China now has more than 100 cities of over 1 million residents, a number that is likely to double in the next decade.

According to the Demographia research group, the world’s most populous country boasts 102 cities bigger than 1 million people, many of which are little known outside the country – or even within its borders.

. . .

The scale of China’s urban ambitions is staggering: it now has 119 cities bigger than Liverpool. By 2025, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, that number is predicted to have more than doubled.

One reason is that the government is actively encouraging rural residents to urbanise. China aims to have 60% of its people living in cities by 2020, up from 56.1% currently, and the World Bank estimates a billion people – or 70% of the country’s population – will be living in cities by 2030.

. . .

Measuring the population of a city in China is not an exact science. Chinese cities often administer sizeable rural areas beyond the city centre and surrounding suburbs, and the Chinese word for city – shì or – is typically used to describe a sub-provincial region. Rolling mountains and hundreds of miles of the Great Wall lie within Beijing’s official boundary, for instance, and nearly all Chinese municipalities contain at least one rural county within the city limits.

. . .

In one extreme example, Chongqing municipality covers an area almost the size of Austria, but the urban area covers only about a quarter of that, according to Demographia. Analysis shows that while the total population living within the city limits is close to 50 million, only about 7.4 million people live in the urban area.

Another issue is that Chinese cities are growing so large that it has become difficult to determine where one begins and another ends. Guangzhou, formerly known as Canton, has an underground line that snakes into the neighbouring city of Foshan. Does that make it one city or two?