Growth Pattern of China’s Cities Since 1950

We use data from the 2009 World Urbanization Prospects database and other sources to estimate trends in the number, distribution, and movement of Chinese cities and centroids since 1950. China’s cities have witnessed a rapid growth with a difference between coastal cities and inland ones. China’s cities tend to be more evenly distributed after 1980 and that larger cities are more evenly distributed than smaller cities. The distance of the geographic centroids for Chinese cities between 1950 and 2009 was within 100km, whereas the population centroid of cities moved by 340km southwestward during this period and the economic centroid (i.e., GDP of cities) moved southward by 200-360km from 1985 to 2005 followed by an eastward movement from 2005 to 2009, reflecting a retreat of migrants from south China due to the recent global economic crisis. However, the trajectory of centroid of social welfare of cities lies 120-230km west of the economic centroid trajectory and 50-150km west of the population centroid trajectory from 1985 to 2009, indicating that social welfare development in cities is behind urbanization and economic growth in contemporary China, which places a challenge for improvement of quality of life for urban residents in China.