The Long Tail – 60 Chinese Cities with a Population of Over 1 Million

by Chinfographics on May 20, 2010

60 Cities with more than 1 Million inhabitants

There are as many as 60 cities in China with more than 1M people

For purpose of giving viewers an impression of Chinese city sizes, the graph depicts 60 Chinese cities of which the urban area population is larger than 1 million. From the bottom to the top, they are listed in an order by their sizes. The smallest is Qiqihar, Northeast China, with 1.04 million, and Shanghai, the largest in China, boasts 14.24 million.

We have compared city population data in China and the world using data from demographia.com. We also adopt its definition of urban area population which means:

“a continuously built up landmass of urban development”, or “the lighted area that can be observed from an airplane at night”.

As a result, if you find a man from Chongqing, where 31 million is claimed living, mad at the city’s downsized population, please don’t be upset! The 31 million people are living all over the municipal area where most part is rural. Therefore, the major part of the figure cannot be counted as the city population even though the concept of urban area population is not adopted.

We also list some world famous cities alongside their Chinese counterparts in the graph where the Chinese data are mainly made for 2007 and the world ones for 2009 estimation.

This is our first post of 3 in a series about the population in China. Look forward to our post on Beijing population that will be published soon. Subscribe to our RSS feed here.

Source: Demographia.com
Datafile: Download our datafile

Use the below code to embed the infographic:

<a href="http://chinfographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/China-population-60-chinese-cities.gif"><img title="China-population-60-chinese-cities" src="http://chinfographics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/China-population-60-chinese-cities.gif" alt="60 Cities with more than 1 Million inhabitants" width="562" height="700" /></a>

Tagged as: Beijing, China, chongqing, Infographics, Population, Shanghai

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{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }

Krister May 22, 2010 at 22:49

City population is really a confusing subject. There is huge variations of the values depending on definition:
“Municipality population”, “Urban area population “, “Agglomerations population”, “Including suburban district population”…and the list can be longer.
Dangerous to compare values from different sources.

Good luck with this interesting blogg. I will follow you.

chinfo May 23, 2010 at 04:38

Thanks Krister! It sure is confusing with population definitions. To that, the man on the street also has his view (I’ve had taxi drivers saying Beijing has 12M, 14M, 17M and 22M people & they are sort of all correct).

Look forward to two more infographics on population, some on the automotive business and the real estate market of Beijing next.

Check out Krister’s blog – covers Beijing on a daily basis! In Swedish

jg May 26, 2010 at 01:43

According to the China Daily, February 26, 2010 (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/26/content_9511839.htm) Beijing’s population is 22 million. Whether that means the municipality or the city is anyone’s guess, though it is 10 million more than Demographia has given Beijing credit for. I think it is also a fair bet that the city’s population is a lot more than 12 million. I live in Tianjin and the municipality’s population is a lot higher than you have listed, and the city is a lot lower, more along the lines of 12+ million and six million respectively, as best as anyone can tell. Demographia needs to do some significant updating.

chinfo May 26, 2010 at 07:37

Thanks for your reply. 22M is the total population of Beijing reported in 2010. Our data is since 2007 (a little bit old but we need data from all cities to be able to compare) and it represents urban area population – read the definition in the post. We agree that Beijing and some other cities urban area population has grown a lot since 2007.

lolz May 26, 2010 at 09:11

Hi your figure for Boston is a bit off. The city has close to 600k people, not 6m people. Other than that keep up the good work!

David.W May 26, 2010 at 10:31

Lolz, thanks for your comment. I suppose you are mentioning the city resident number, instead of Boston’s urban area population. Like the City of London, its population is far less than London.

Lorenz May 28, 2010 at 04:21

Very cool graph and blog. Looking forward to more….

What happened to Chongqing?

David.W May 28, 2010 at 08:43

Thank you, Lorenz. We will present more interesting graphs concering China. Chongqing has a large population of which rural residents are the major part. As a result, people are often confused by the large number of its population which reaches tens of millions. However, we only focus on “Urban Area Population” of the cities. Chongqing is not a big one in this regard.

ringring July 25, 2010 at 09:59

Of the 54 Chinese mainland cities, how many either have or plan to have a subway system? I’m too lazy to compare lists but it looks like a high majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_transit_in_the_People’s_Republic_of_China

46 different mainland Chinese cities have subway projects!

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