The Changing Character of Chinese Urbanization: 2000 - 2021

The scale and pace of urbanization in China over the past few decades is one of the most significant transformations of any human society in history. However, studying urbanization in China encounters an empirical difficulty common to many urban systems: Are there spatial units corresponding to cities as spaces of socioeconomic interaction? To address this question and analyze the transformation of Chinese cities and China’s urban system over the last few decades, we analyze a rich set of data comprising of 297 Chinese Prefecture-level Cities (PLCs) from 2000 to 2021. Our analysis fills a number of important gaps by carefully considering the difference in scaling effects result from using total versus registered population, and full PLCs definitions compared to their restriction to Urban Districts (UDs). Our results show that PLCs as well as their UDs exhibit scaling effects when measured with resident population. PLCs have become better urban units of analysis, characterizing functional cities in similar ways to other urban systems, especially after 2015. Their scaling exponents for GDP are also somewhat closer to theory than those obtained in UDs. The substantial redistribution of the population, with a growing concentration in larger and coastal cities and urban districts resulting in the scaling behavior. The future of Chinese urbanization is that these trends will intensify, leading to continued stronger growth of larger cities and relative population decline of many small and more rural places.