Beijing more resembles Greater New York—a conglomeration of over 70 cities—than it does New York City. A similar pattern holds for most Chinese cities.
TIL with this one, I’ve been wondering until now how so many cities in China have a crazy high population and if it really is that urbanized
It's also interesting to note PRC cities, are not particularly dense. Population densities in cities within a country tend to follow zipfs law, which would predict BJ and SH to be 3-4x larger than it currently is. But hukou anbd industrial policy seems to be designed to limit megacity sizes to redirect popuation towards growing 3rd, 4th+ tier cities into their own economic hubs.
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TIL with this one, I’ve been wondering until now how so many cities in China have a crazy high population and if it really is that urbanized
It's also interesting to note PRC cities, are not particularly dense. Population densities in cities within a country tend to follow zipfs law, which would predict BJ and SH to be 3-4x larger than it currently is. But hukou anbd industrial policy seems to be designed to limit megacity sizes to redirect popuation towards growing 3rd, 4th+ tier cities into their own economic hubs.