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CHN | Sep 25, 2024

China sees rising urbanisation rate over past 75 years

/ Our Today

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A Chinese municipality

China’s urbanisation rate, which measures the ratio of permanent urban residents relative to the total population, rose by 55.52 percentage points from the end of 1949 to 66.16 per cent by the end of 2023, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Monday.

Over the past 75 years, since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the country has undergone the largest and fastest urbanisation process in world history, the NBS said in a report.

There were just 129 cities in China at the end of 1949, with a combined population of 39.49 million. The number of cities reached 694 at the end of 2023, while prefecture-level and larger cities were home to 673.13 million people. Among them, there were 29 cities each with a population exceeding five million and 11 cities each with a population of over 10 million.

An aerial drone photo taken on November 4, 2023 shows a view of the Hengqin International Financial Center in Zhuhai, south China’s Guangdong Province. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, a city cluster, is one of the most open areas in China with economic vitality. The greater bay area is composed of nine cities in Guangdong Province including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing, and two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao. (Photo: Xinhua/Liu Dawei)

Remarkably, China’s less-developed western region is rising, representing a more balanced urbanisation process. Among the 11 prefecture-level cities that have been added since 2011, nine of them are located in the western region.

As urbanisation advances, China has lifted almost all limits on household registration in cities with less than three million permanent residents, making it more convenient for those from rural areas to permanently settle in cities.

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