The Changing System of Chinese Cities

Author(s): Sen-Dou Chang

Source: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Sep., 1976), pp.
398-415
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of American Geographers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2562115
Accessed: 17-09-2016 03:50 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2562115?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Association of American Geographers, Taylor & Francis, Ltd. are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Annals of the Association of American Geographers

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE CHANGING SYSTEM OF CHINESE CITIES*

SEN-DOU CHANG

ABSTRACT. A dual system of urban centers, one inherited from late imperial
times and the other from the developed world, has recently emerged as the spatial
structure for national development in China. The development policy since the
Cultural Revolution has emphasized the role of small and medium sized traditional
cities and the widespread application of "intermediate technology" in fostering
rural enterprises throughout the country. The old administrative cities have been
gradually transformed into a hierarchical urban network of local industrial produc-
tion centers to serve agriculture.

JN most industrial countries and in many de-
veloping nations, rapid urbanization has
been accepted widely as a necessary precondi-
tion for modernization and development. Only
in recent years have planners and policy
makers begun to think of alternatives to the
process of polarization in the location of eco-
nomic activities as expressed in the develop-
ment of urban and rural areas of a nation.1
Dr. Chang is Professor of Geography at the University
of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, HA 96822.
* The author wishes to express his gratitude to
Rhoads Murphey of the University of Michigan for
his constructive comments and helpful suggestions. A
shorter version of this paper was presented at the 72nd
annual meeting of the Association of American Geog-
raphers, April 11-14, 1976, New York.
1 Many social scientists feel that for most develop-
ing countries where rural populations still form a
majority of the total population, a hierarchical patterrr
of towns and rural centers closely related to the find-
ings of central place theory should be the most
promising and basic solution for economic planning
and resource allocation. E. Brutzkus, "Centralized
versus Decentralized Patterns of Urbanization in De-
veloping Countries: An Attempt to Elucidate a Guide-
line," Economic Development and Cultural Change,
Vol. 23 (1975), pp. 633-52; P. R. Gould, "The Spatial
Impress of the Modernization Process: Tanzania 1920-
1963," World Politics, Vol. 22 (1970), pp. 149-70;
and M. A. Qadeer, "Do Cities 'Modernize' Developing
Countries? An Examination of the South Asian Ex-
perience," Comparative Studies in Society and History,
Vol. 16 (1974), pp. 266-83. The literature on decen-
tralization and the notion of "growth poles" has been
developed increasingly in recent years. L. Lefeber,
Regional Development: Experiences and Prospect in
South and Southeast Asia (The Hague: Mouton,
1971); J. Friedmann, Urbanization, Planning, and Na-
tional Development (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications,
1973); D. F. Darwent, "Growth Poles and Growth
After a fairly successful drive for industrializa-
tion and economic development extending over
more than a quarter century, less than twenty
percent of China's population is urban and
the spatial pattern of Chinese cities today re-
sembles more the system of administrative
centers in late imperial China than it does an
urban system characteristic of advanced in-
dustrial countries. Nor does the urbanization
pattern resemble that of the developing na-
tions of the Third World. Rather, a dual system
of urban centers, one inherited from imperial
China and the other from the developed world,
can be discerned on the map. This paper eval-
uates the spatial distribution of Chinese cities
in recent years and assesses the consequences
of development policy on the hierarchical pat-
tern of cities. It also analyzes the role of small
and medium-sized cities in a dual urban system
where a planned economy for an agrarian
society is marked by a high degree of regional
disequilibrium.
DATA AND DEFINITION
Any meaningful analysis of urban growth
and urbanization requires a set of reasonably
reliable statistics for the total urban population
and population data for individual cities. Un-
fortunately, such data are not readily available
for China. The main interest of the present
regime in the population census has been not
so much demographic as political and adminis-
Centers in Regional Planning-A Review," Environ-
ment and Planning, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 5-32; A. R.
Kuklinsk, Growth Poles and Growth Centers in
Regional Planning (The Hague: Mouton, 1972); H.
Buttler, Growth Pole Theory and Economic Develop-
ment (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975).

ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS Vol. 66, No. 3, September 1976
? 1976 by the Association of American Geographers. Printed in U.S.A.

398

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 1976 CHINESE CITIES 399

TABLE 1.-URBAN-RURAL POPULATION RATIO IN CHINA, to the shortage of trained personnel handling
1949-1970
the statistical works, especially at lower admin-
istrative levels, the efficiency with which the
Year Urban population Rural population
Ministry of Public Security manages the popu-
1949 10.6 89.4 lation statistics was questionable. During the
1950 11.1 88.9
turbulent years of the Great Leap Forward
1951 11.8 88.2
1952 12.5 87.5 (1958-61), even rudimentary work of popu-
1953 13.2 86.8 lation compilation was disrupted, and most
1954 13.6 86.4 statistical figures which came out in that pe-
1955 13.5 86.5 riod were generally unreliable. In the middle
1956 14.2 85.8
1960s, efforts to reestablish the statistical or-
1957 14.3 85.7
1958 16.2 83.8 ganization were slow; they concentrated largely
1959 17.5 82.5 on economic growth data, such as agricultural
1960 18.8 81.2 products and industrial outputs, which were
1970 16.8 83.2
supposedly more vital to China's recovery than
Sources: 1949-1956: T'ung-chi kung-tso (Statistical Work), demographic details. The Cultural Revolution
1957, No. 11. 1957: Chi-hua ching-chi (Planned Economy),
1957, No. 8. 1958-1960: A. Eckstein, et al., Economic Trends did not generate any refinement in population
in Communist China (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968).
registration in urban areas. In the past few
1970: China's urban population in January 1970 was estimated
at about 125 million and the total population of China in that years, there have been signs of improvement
year was 753 million; L. A. Orleans, op. cit., footnote 2, pp.
5' 70.
in the availability of the estimates of popula-
tion size of selected cities in rounded-off fig-
ures. This piecemeal information concerning
trative; this was true in imperial times, also. population size of individual cities is extremely
Most census figures for China, such as the fragmentary, poorly defined, and appears in
widely used 1953 national census, were ob- various Chinese news media covering a span
tained from registration rather than door-to- of several years.
door canvassing. In spite of its deficiencies and An interesting development in China's urban
shortcomings the 1953 census has been the population statistics during recent years is the
only set of census data available for urban issue of several Chinese atlases which use
studies, even though the total Chinese urban quantitative symbols to denote the relative
population of 77,259,282, revealed by the
population of each city in different size groups
down to the lowest level of cities which have
census, was believed by some Western scholars
a population of 10,000 or less.3 None of the
to be more or less underestimated.2 The vari-
atlases published in the period of 1972-74
ous ratios of urban population for the years
indicate the date of these data nor do they
before and after 1953 are really no more than
specify the source of urban censuses. Informa-
arbitrary exercises of interpolation with the
tion on population size groups of Chinese cities
1953 census as the base (Table 1). The data is available for the first time since 1953 from
are incomplete compilations of unchecked re- the Chinese official publication. Since this
ports of provinces and municipalities but they paper only aims to outline a broad silhouette
have been quoted repetitiously in various of urban development in a spatial context, a
studies of China's demographic changes. study based on these cartographic data should
The responsibility for population registers provide a tentative measurement of relative
and records in China was not placed in the urban growth in various parts of China.
hands of the State Statistical Bureau, or even Besides the ambiguous quality of population
with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was data, an equally annoying problem in studying
assigned to the Ministry of Public Security and
its various branches and offices which reach 3 At least four atlases of China have been published
down to every administrative level. Due mainly in Peking since 1972. Maps in the following two atlases
are of particular interest for urban studies: Chung-hua
jen-min kung-ho-kua ti-t'u-chi (Atlas of the People's
2 For a critical evaluation of the urban population Republic of China) (Peking: Ti-t'u ch'u-pan-she,
data in the 1953 census, see L. A. Orleans, Every 1972); Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho-kuo fen-sheng ti-t'u
Fifth Child: the Population of China (Stanford: Stan- chi (Atlas of Provinces of the People's Republic of
ford University Press, 1972), pp. 57-72. China) (Peking: Ti-t'u ch'u-pan-she, 1974).

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 400 SEN-DOU CHANG
Chinese cities is the definition of urban popula-
tion. There has been very little indication that
the census authority in China has followed a
definite set of criteria defining rural and urban
population. The 1953 census reported a total
of 5,568 "urban places" but there was no pre-
cise explanation of any demographic charac-
teristics of such places. It was not until
November 1955 that the State Council at-
tempted to define "urban" and instructed the
Ministry of Internal Affairs to develop guide-
lines for such a definition. A definition was
agreed upon in which places that meet any
one of the following three criteria were con-
sidered "urban places" :4
1) seat of a municipal people's committee
or people's committee at or above the
hsien (or its equivalent) level, regardless
of population size;
2) a minimum resident population of 2,000,
at least fifty percent of which is non-
agricultural;
3) a resident population of between 1,000
and 2,000, seventy-five percent of which
is nonagricultural.
Such a definition has been published in Chinese
official documents and has been quoted fre-
quently in studies published in Western jour-
nals. There is no way of knowing to what
extent this definition prevailed or, for that
matter, whether detailed census data concern-
ing the occupations of city dwellers were
available to enable application of the criteria.
Certainly, the 1953 census does not include the
question of occupation in the survey.
Among the 5,568 urban places reported in
the 1953 census, 4,228 fall in the population
size group of 2,000 to 20,000, accounting for
about seventy-six percent of the total urban
places and nearly one-third of the total urban
population in China. There were also 727
urban places in the population size group of
1,000 to 2,000 and 193 places in the group
of less than 1,000 in 1953.5 In other words,
4 For an official document concerning various cri-
teria for the demarcation between urban and rural
areas, see H. Y. Tien, China's Population Struggle
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973), Ap-
pendix D, pp. 356-58.
5 The breakdowns of various size groups of Chinese
cities as reported in the 1953 census are found in M.
B. Ullman, Cities of Mainland China: 1953 and 1958
(U. S. Bureau of Census: International Population
Reports, Series P-95, No. 59, August, 1961), pp. 8-9.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
September
approximately ninety-three percent of all urban
places in China were in the population size
group of 20,000 or less, reflecting, most likely,
the dominance of hsien cities and market towns
in the traditional Chinese urban system. The
Chinese atlases published in 1972 and 1974
do not give further breakdowns for those urban
places with a population of 10,000 or less, and
thus a study of the relative change in the num-
ber of these lower level urban places during
the period of 1953-72 is not possible at the
present time.
Recent Chinese atlases completely ignore the
issue of urban-rural classification. All settle-
ments are classified and symbolized according
to their population size and administrative
status, but they are all under the broad head-
ing of "chu min tien," literally, "resident
points," thus eliminating the dichotomy of
rural and urban. The administrative status of
a settlement is still very important in defining
urban places and it is likely that all settlements
in which a people's committee at or above
hsien level is located are classified as "urban
places." Therefore, it should be of little sur-
prise that a number of "urban places" in China,
especially in the interior provinces and auton-
omous regions, still have a population of 1,000
or less.
Because of the very definition of "urban
places" mentioned above, the inclusion of a
segment of the population engaged in agri-
cultural activities is a characteristic feature of
Chinese cities. The inclusion of the agricultural
population in urban places may have stemmed
from the fact that the administrative boundaries
of local districts, rather than the extent of
urbanized areas, were used in defining urban
places or urban population. The proportion
of agricultural population varies from city to
city and is highest in large "municipalities"
which include a number of rural counties within
their boundaries. A relatively high percentage of
agricultural population is found also in small
hsien cities where a subsistent type of agriculture
dominates the landscape.
MODERN TRENDS IN URBANIZATION
In the past two decades, China as a whole
has experienced relatively moderate urban
growth compared with other developing nations
with a similar rate of economic growth. The
first decade of the People's Republic of China
showed a remarkable and steady gain in urban
 1976 CHINESE
population, reflecting both the relatively suc-
cessful industrial programs of the First Five
Year Plan (1952-57) and the uncontrolled
rural to urban migration of the early stages of
collectivization and the Great Leap period.6
The ratio of urban to total population reached
its peak in 1960 when nearly nineteen percent
of the population was estimated as urban. The
first youth rustication movement was initiated
in 1957, but it was soon interrupted by the
Great Leap and the inauguration of communes
the following year. The rustication movement
was resumed in 1962 and was carried out
rather effectively for about four years until it
was halted by the Cultural Revolution. In the
middle of 1968, the campaign of returning
youths to the countryside was revived vigor-
ously. During the period of 1968-70 alone,
the total number of rusticated urban youths was
estimated at between ten and fifteen million,
mainly from major cities such as Peking,
Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton, and Wuhan.7
Throughout the sixties, there was relatively
little growth in China's urban population es-
pecially among the largest metropolises. The
percentage of the population that was urban
in 1970 is generally estimated at around six-
teen or seventeen percent, as compared with
about eighteen percent for India and Indonesia
in the same year.8
Another index of urban development is
provided by the number of cities with a popu-
lation of 100,000 or more. China is below the
United States, U. S. S. R., India, and Japan in
the number of such cities (Table 2). China's
increase from 102 in 1953 to 130 in 1972,
is moderate in comparison with the Soviet
Union in which the number of such cities in-
creased from 146 in 1959 to 233 in 1972. In
terms of the total urban population, however,
6 In the period of 1949-60, the urban population in
China grew at an annual average rate of 7.6 percent,
more than three times the population growth for China
as a whole. See K. Chao, "Industrialization and Urban
Housing in Communist China," Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 25 (1966), pp. 381-96.
7 P. C. Chen, "Overurbanization, Rustication of
Urban-Educated Youths, and Politics of Rural Trans-
formation," Comparative Politics, Vol. 4 (1972), pp.
361-87.
8 For the ratio of urban to total population in
China see Table 1; for the estimated urban population
in India and Indonesia, see K. Davis, World Urban-
ization, 1950-1970, Vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of
California Institute of International Studies, Popula-
tion Monograph Series No. 4, 1969), pp. 71-74.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITIES 401
TABLE 2.-NUMBER OF CITIES WITH POPULATION OF
100,000 OR MORE IN SELECTED COUNTRIES
Country Number of cities Year
United States 246 1970
Soviet Union 233 1972
India 162 1971
Japan 160 1971
China 130 1972
Sources: Figures for the United States, Soviet Union, India,
and Japan were tabulated from Table 7 in UN Demographic
Yearbook 1972; the figure for China was tabulated from Chung-
hua jen-min kung-ho-kuo ti-t'u chi, op. cit., footnote 3.
China probably ranks third in the world with
about 125 million people classified as urban
in 1970, following the United States with 149
million, and the USSR with 134 million in
1969.9
The number of Chinese cities in various
size groups increased during the period 1953-
72 (Table 3). The expansion of municipal
boundaries, especially since 1958, has contrib-
uted significantly to the statistical increase in
9 The urban population of the Soviet Union in 1969
is derived from C. D. Harris, Cities of Soviet Union
(Association of American Geographers, Monograph
Series No. 5, 1970), p. 3. Due to lack of reliable data
on China's urban population, the relative ranking of
China's position in the size of total population is more
useful than the absolute figure of China's total urban
population as quoted here.
TABLE 3.-NUMBER OF CHINESE URBAN SETTLEMENTS
BY SIZE, 1953-1972
Number of settlements
Size group of population 1953 1972
More than 5,000,000 1 2
3,000,000-5,000,000 1 1
2,000,000-3,000,000 2 4
1,000,000-2,000,000 5 14
500,000-1,000,000 16 22
100,000- 500,000 77 91
50,000- 100,000 71 105
10,000- 50,000 n.a. 940
Source: The number of cities in 1953 was derived from the
tabulation by Ullman, op. cit., footnote 5. The numbers of
cities in 1972 were taken from Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho kuo
ti-t'u chi, op. cit., footnote 3. The numbers of cities in the
groups of 500,000 to 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 to 2,000,000
have been adjusted with the estimation given in C. S. Chen,
"Population Growth and Urbanization in China, 1953-1970,"
Geographical Review, Vol. 63 (1973), pp. 55-72. Chen's popu-
lation figure implies, in many cases, the population of a whole
municipality while the Chinese atlas only shows the generalized
size group of individual communities within a municipality. For
example, the municipality of Tzepo in Shantung has a popula-
tion of 850,000 in Chen's table, but the atlas does not give
such a figure. Chen's figures appear to be derived from Chinese
news media of different dates with varied definitions.
 402 SEN-DOU CHANG September

TABLE 4.-PRIMACY AND GROWTH OF THE CAPITAL CITIES IN PROVINCES AND AUTONOMOUS
REGIONS IN CHINA

Population of capital city

Primacy index (in 1,000)

Provincial unit Capital city in 1970 1953 1970 % increase

Kansu Lanchou 19.33 397 1,450 265.24

Ch'inghai Hsining 16.67 94 500 431.91
Yunnan K'unming 14.67 699 1,100 57.37
Hupei Wuhan 12.80 1,427 2,560 79.40
Kwangtung Canton 8.33 1,599 2,500 56.35
Shensi Sian 8.00 787 1,600 103.30
Ninghsia Yinch'uan 6.67 84 240 185.71
Sinkiang Urumchi 6.67 141 500 254.61
Chekiang Hangchou 4.80 697 960 37.73
Fukien Fuchou 3.40 533 680 22.97
Kiangsi Nanch'ang 3.35 398 675 69.60
Kweichow Kweiyang 3.30 271 660 143.54
Hunan Ch'angsha 2.75 651 825 26.73
Kiangsu Nanking 2.39 1,092 1,750 60.26
Heilungkiang Harbin 2.19 1,163 1,670 43.59
Shansi T'aiyuan 2.08 721 1,350 87.24
Kwangsi Nanning 1.83 195 550 182.05
Honan Chengchou 1.81 595 1,050 76.47
Liaoning Shenyang 1.07 2,300 2,800 21.74
Kirin Ch'angchun 1.06 855 1,200 40.35
Anhwei Hofei 1.05 184 630 292.39
Shantung Chinan 0.85 680 1,100 61.76
Hopei Shihchiachuang 0.83 373 800 114.47
Inner Mongolia Huhehot 0.57 148 530 258.11
Szechwan Ch'engtu 0.50 857 1,250 45.86

Sources: 1953 population: Ullman, op. cit., footnote 5. 1970 population: Chen, op. cit., Table 3; Chugoku
keizai no genio to tenbo (The Present Situation and the Prospect of China's Economy) (Tokyo: Fuji Journal,
1974), pp. 187-90. Fuji Journal's figures, in most cases, match Chen's estimates rather well, although both
estimates appear to be derived from Chinese news media with various dates and different sources. The data
used in this table are imperfect and should not be uncritically quoted for any demographic analysis of selected
cities. The table is intended to indicate no more than a tentative ranking of relative primacy and growth rate
of the capital cities.

the number of cities with a population of
100,000 or more. The expansion of the terri-
tories of those cities with the status of in-
dependent municipalities and prefectural mu-
nicipalities often resulted in an increase of
twenty-five to thirty percent in the municipal
population, which represented mainly popula-
tion engaged in agricultural activities.
PROVINCIAL CAPITALS:
REGIONAL PRIMACY
One of the most remarkable features of
China's urban development in the past twenty-
six years has been the rapid growth of provin-
cial capitals throughout the country. Ten out
of twenty-five capital cities of provinces and
autonomous regions more than doubled their
population in the seventeen years from 1953
to 1970; five of the ten tripled their population
in the same period (Table 4). Capital cities
in the perpheral areas of the northwest and
the southwest generally have grown more
rapidly than those in the core areas of China.
Cities in the frontier regions all had relatively
small populations in 1953. Among the five
cities which have tripled their population, two
are capitals of autonomous regions (Urumchi
and Huhehot), two are capitals of the north-
western provinces (Lanchou and Hsining), and
one is Hofei of Anhwei province, a new provin-
cial capital designated after 1949.10
Even though the boundaries of province-
level units have undergone many important
changes in the past twenty-six years, the capital
cities in most of these units are the same ad-
ministrative centers of provinces as those of a
century ago." Contemporary China inherited
10 The city of Anch'ing, located on the north bank
of the Yangtze, was the provincial capital in late im-
perial China and during the pre-1949 period.
11 For the changes of various levels of administrative
divisions and their justifications since 1949, see I. Y.

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 1976 CHINESE
an urban network of late imperial China in
designating provincial capitals. There are only
three cases in which the capital cities have
been altered after 1949; Hofei replaced
Anch'ing in Anhwei, Chengchou displaced
K'aifeng in Honan, and Shihchiachuang sub-
stituted Paoting in Hopei. Hofei is more cen-
trally located in Anhwei than the old capital
of Anch'ing, and both Chengchou and Shi-
chiachuang are important railroad junctions in
north China.'2 Almost all of the other twenty-
three capital cities of province-level units,
many having an urban history of several cen-
turies, have grown substantially as their geo-
graphical centrality has been further enhanced
with the establishment of modern transport
systems. Except for the city of Lhasa, all
capital cities of province-level units in China
have been reached by at least one rail line.
As modern transport has enhanced the
locational advantages of traditional capital
cities, these cities have been selected apparently
as "development poles" by the central authority
for regional development, especially after the
Cultural Revolution, when the system of "eco-
nomic cooperative regions," a supraprovincial
system of economic regionalization patterned
after the Soviet model, lost its significance in
the wake of the campaign for self-reliance and
self-sufficiency at all administrative levels.13
Instead of advocating the establishment of a
modern sector of heavy industries in each co-
operative region, recent policy has put empha-
Hsueh, "Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho kuo hsin-cheng
ch'u-yueh ti hua-fen" (The Demarcation of Adminis-
trative Areas in the People's Republic of China),
ACTA Geographica Sinica, Vol. 24 (1958), pp. 84-
97; and Central Intelligence Agency, Peoples Republic
of China Administrative Atlas, March 1975, pp. 6-7.
12Both Chengchou and Shihchiachuang became
railroad junctions during the pre-1949 period. Cheng-
chou was the site of the earliest capital city, Ao, of
the Shang dynasty around 1,700 B.C., and has been
almost continuously a walled administrative center in
imperial times. Shihchiachuang was a village in late
imperial time and its location was enhanced greatly
when the site was selected as the connecting point of
the Peking-Hankow railroad and the Cheng-ting-
Taiyuan railroad in early 1930s.
13 Seven "economic cooperative regions" were initi-
ated in 1958, each containing three or four province-
level units as a rational economic regionalization to
stimulate regional economic development and to pro-
mote regional self-sufficiency. For a detailed account
of this system of regionalization, see Y. L. Wu, The
Spatial Economy of Communist China (New York:
Praeger, 1967), pp. 20-21.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITIES 403
sis on the development of a complex of modern
industries in each province, including iron and
steel, heavy machinery, motor vehicles, agri-
cultural machinery, and modern textiles. The
capital city has a better infrastructure for in-
dustrial construction and commands nodality
in both traditional and modern transport sys-
tems within each province and it became the
most favorable site for the modern sector of
heavy and light industries.14
The deliberate allocation of capital invest-
ment in provincial capitals has enhanced urban
primacy of province-level capital cities. Among
the twenty-six provincial administrative units,
there are twenty-two units in which the capital
city is the largest city. The four exceptions
occur in Shantung, Hopei, Szechwan, and
Inner Mongolia (Fig. 1). In Shantung and
Szechwan, the port cities of Ch'ingtao and
Chungking, which grew very rapidly in the
"treaty port" period, had already surpassed
the respective capital cities of Chinan and
Ch'engtu in population during the pre-1949
period. 15 In Hopei, the heavy industrial city
of T'angshan had already outgrown all other
cities in the 1940s except for Peking and
Tientsin, two of the three independent mu-
nicipalities in China today. In Inner Mongolia,
Paot'ou, the steel city created in the desert in
1958, has overshadowed the capital city of
Huhehot.
The provincial capitals today in most cases
are still the primate cities in their respective
units as they were in imperial China. The index
of primacy, defined as the ratio between pop-
ulation of the primate city and that of the
second largest city has changed significantly
14 For example, among the nine largest cotton tex-
tile factories in Shensi, six are concentrated in the
capital city of Sian; two out of four electric generator
plants in Kiangsi are located in the capital city of
Nanchang; all two transformer manufacturing plants
in Anhwei are in the capital city of Hofei. For some
detailed locations of selected industries in various
cities, see Y. Lu, et al. Chung-kung kung-yeh kai-
k'uang shih lu (A Factual Record of Communist
China's Industries) (Hong Kong: Chung-shan Book
Co., 1972).
15 In 1946, the four cities' populations were estimated
officially as follows: Ch'ingtao, 850,508; Chinan, 605,-
815; Chungking, 985,673; Ch'engtu, 727,422; W. L.
Kuan, Chung-hua min-kuo hsin-cheng ch'u-hua chi
tu-ti jen-k'ou t'ung-chi piao (The Statistical Tables of
Areas and Populations of Administrative Subdivisions
of the Republic of China) (Taipei: Shih-ti tsa-chih she,
1956), pp. 5-6, 30, 75.
 404 SEN-DOU CHANG September

PROVINCIAL CAPITALS IN CHINA: 1974

-SI Or GK IANG

HAR BIN

0 %~~~

-'CHANGCHUN

0URUMCH \ _

SINKEST lAING UITSGPUR AUTONOMOUS REGION I PAOTOU OHhh AGSHAN

(m TAIYUAN op ai.Tbe3
INCHUAN CHNGTAO
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-,HSNING hi,
CHINGHAI SAS
CHENGCHOU K~f.
~~LANCHOU ~~~~ KIANGSU

(3
- SHENSI~ OA0 NAN~KING
1t000,000--2,000t000~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~5 E Gl N\

TIBETAN AUTONOMOUS REGION 7- WUA Sharghai

'3d L.)CHANGSHA. /ANGCH-

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~AS I " S '1 /.!,

CAPITAL CITY NON-CAPITAL CITY ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1FUKIENHUNGFUCHOU~

(~;th p~~I~tk~)1 KUESYNGCHW2N

FIG. 1. Caital citie of provines and
C~~autnomous regonsA1974 ,Sourc:chhiaghua e;l
KWANGTU~~~~NGHN
CCUAG HUTNOMU

TECITA AEP E IH L AITALLLETTERSNDNOCPTES CTHEHO

2,000,000--3,000,000 KWANG L~~~~~~~~~~~ 40G0K

LARGES CITY N ITSPROVINE OR ATONOMUS REGONC___________________

FIG. 1. Capital cities ofprvice NNdAutnmu eiNs,17.SuCe:ChNgTuON

1m000k00g-h 000kuo fe-hn tituclJRpEctfotoe3 C. S.Ceo.ctTbe3

since 1949. Between 1946 and 1970, for ex-
ample, the primacy index of Canton jumped
from 4.17 to 8.33 and that of Fuchou from
2.16 to 3.40; on the other hand, that of
Shenyang declined from 1.88 to 1.07.16 Pri-
macy declined in well-developed provinces and
it increased in the less developed provinces
in recent years. Among the four capital cities
which now have a primacy index of over ten,
Lanchou and Hsining are newly rising indus-
trial centers of the northwest, K'unming is the
transport and industrial city of the southwest,
the Yangtze and the Han, is the most impor-
tant transport node and industrial center of
central China.
Despite the extreme variations in physical
conditions, resource endowment, population
densities, transport facilities, and agricultural
productivity in the various provinces and
autonomous regions, the growth of capital
cities throughout the country appears to be
uniformly fast. Except for the cities of Lhasa
and Yinch'uan, all the provincial cities have a
population of 500,000 or more within their

and Wuhan, which comprises the triple cities on
16 The calculation of the primacy of these three
capital cities is based on the population figures listed
in Kuan, op. cit., footnote 15, and Chen, op. cit., Table
3.
municipal boundaries. Among the forty cities
which have a population between 500,000 and
3,000,000, twenty-four (sixty percent) are
provincial cities (Figs. 1 and 2). The role of
provincial capitals is even more impressive if
the class of "million city" alone is taken into

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 1976 CHINESE
consideration. Among the eighteen cities with
a population of between 1,000,000 and
3,000,000, thirteen are provincial capitals.17
Since the inland provinces in the northwest are
sparsely populated, the growth of the capital
cities has resulted in the concentration of a
sizable proportion of the total population of
a province in the capital city. The city of
Yinchuan contains more than eleven percent
of the total population of Ninghsia Hui Auton-
omous Region and the city of Hsining accounts
for nearly a quarter of the total population of
Ch'inghai province.'8 The growth of these cities
was not caused entirely by the city-bound mi-
gration of rural population in each province.
The assigned migration of urban youths and
industrial workers from coastal cities has, in
some cases, contributed more to the growth of
these inland cities.'9
Since 1958, China has vigorously promoted
a policy of regional self-reliance and self-
sufficiency in economic development, although
it is extremely unlikely that the western prov-
inces and autonomous regions, with their
meager resource base and limited agricultural
surplus, have been able to support such large
capital cities unaided. As with many other de-
veloping countries, China also has had to con-
front the problem of regional inequality. In
addition to the planned population migration
from eastern provinces to the west, there have
been constant technology and capital flows in
the same direction through the channels of a
centralized government in Peking. Since the
17 Chen, op. cit., Table 3.
18 The population of Ch'inghai province was 2,-
140,000 and that of Ninghsi Hui Autonomous Region
was 2,160,000 in 1972. The population of their capital
cities were 500,000 and 240,000 respectively. See
Chugoku keizai no genjo to tenbo (The Present Situa-
tion and the Prospect of China's Economy) (Tokyo:
Fuji Journal, 1974), pp. 187-90.
19 During the past twenty-six years, the numbers
of Han Chinese have increased at a much faster rate
than that of Uighurs and Mongols in Sinkiang and
Inner Mongolia. In 1949, out of the total population
of four million, only 200,000 (five percent) were Han
Chinese. By 1972, among the estimated eight million
people in Sinkiang, about 2.6 million (thirty-five per-
cent) were Han Chinese. In Inner Mongolia, among
an estimated population of 7,800,000 in 1972, only
410,000 were Mongols. Most of the newly arrived Han
Chinese reclaimed lands in the frontier regions, but
many were skilled and semiskilled laborers from
coastal provinces and cities. 0. Lattimore, "Return to
China's Northern Frontier," Geographical Journal,
Vol. 139 (1973), pp. 233-42.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITIES 405
late 1950s, there has been a central-provincial
revenue sharing mechanism. Tibet, Ch'inghai,
Ninghsia, Sinkiang, Kansu, Inner Mongolia,
Yunnan, Kwangsi, and Kweichow have been
the beneficiaries and the contributors have been
Liaoning, Kiangsu, Szechwan, Heilungkiang,
Chekiang, Shantung, and Hopei.20 Government
subsidy to the less developed areas has been
more instrumental in stimulating urban devel-
opment and in reducing regional differences
than the policy of regional self-reliance or
autarky which have been afforded greater
publicity.
MUNICIPALITY:
RURAL-URBAN SYMBIOSIS
The definition of "city" in contemporary
China appears to be rather academic and it is
not clear whether it has been used uniformly
throughout the country. Another definition of
"city" which seems to be used widely in official
atlases and in government documents is shih,
or municipality, defined as a settlement with
a population of 100,000 or more. A settlement
with a population of less than 100,000 can also
be designated as a municipality, provided it is
an important mining or industrial center, a
commercial and transport node, a newly rising
political and economical center in the frontier
areas or an inland area where minority ethnic
groups constitute an important segment of the
population. The status of a municipality is
probably given by the central authority and is
very loosely defined. Chinese municipalities
have undergone considerable change in the
past two decades and there is very little indica-
tion that the present number and status will
be final. As of March 1975, there were three
"independent municipalities" in China (Peking,
Shanghai, and Tientsin) under the direct ju-
risdiction of the central government in Peking.
Their status in the administrative heirarchy is
equivalent to that of a province. There are also
seventy-eight "prefecture-level municipalities"
under the control of provinces or autonomous
regions. These municipalities have been often
called "sub-province municipalities" with a sta-
20 For an account of problems and achievements of
the central provincial revenue sharing policy in China,
see N. R. Lardy, "Economic Planning in the People's
Republic of China: Central-Provincial Fiscal Rela-
tions," in China: A Reassessment of the Economy, 94th
Congress, 1st Session, Joint Economic Committee,
July 10, 1975, pp. 94-115.
 406 SEN-DOU CHANG September

MUNICIPALITIES IN CHINA: 1972

<J \ s s ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~hi h. aerI, ,,O h

/ < * lf h t ? Ls~~~~~~~~husngyosilR n~0*..

ci(gd Hb Chi, Ci 00 h

?0*.

X
K.'nguicon(
ty~~hoso0 Chen~lu0
r 00
TgAn P4
0 0 H00,000 -- 0,000,000 i g r 0 400 80 K

POPULAIIO C Yf1 Lu ht~w

Ogh,, 0 0 0 F~~~~~~~~~~T h w,,

H i~~i~~g 0F /E a ,z,,,-w Liey.k.

FIG. 2.Urban ettlemets wit the sttus ofmuniciplity, 972. Sorce: Cung-huajen-mi
k oc p , e . h . cit., Table 3. 0
0 N O P.~~~~~~~a 4,P

Che,,gt. 0~~~~ ih Ho gIo

l~~~~~~~~~~~~~k L~Ok, tE (Q<~ 0l|

FIG 2 Urban settlemens with the status of unicipality, 1972. Sorce: Chung-hu
kung ho kuo ti-t'u chi, op. cit., Table 2; C. S. Chen, op. cit., Tables3.

tus of a prefecture. In addition, there are 100 seventy-eight prefecture-level municipalities

"hsien-level municipalities" which are the
lowest level of official cities and are under the
administration of prefectural authorities with
a status equivalent to a county.
The three tiers of municipalities, totalling
181 urban units in 1975, form the backbone
of the urban system in China and constitute, in
a spatial sense, a hierarchical network of "de-
velopment poles" for the country (Fig. 2).
Their dispersed distribution on a macroscale
and their more or less aggregated pattern on
a microlevel epitomize the strategy of China's
developmental process. The three independent
municipalities are, in general, the largest pools
of modern technology, resources, skilled per-
sonnel, and perhaps of surplus revenue for
investment in other parts of the country. The
serve as the regional cores of a decentralized
urban system and are, to a great extent, the
aggregates of modern sectors of the national
economy. The 100 hsien-level municipalities
are the contact centers of modern technology
and intermediate technology, and serve as the
catalyst for modernization and transformation
in the rural areas. Given the geographical
contrast and regional inequality of resource
endowment and development levels in China,
the wide dispersion and relatively uniform size
of these municipalities are quite striking.
Twenty-five of the seventy-eight prefecture-
level municipalities are provincial capitals,
nineteen are former treaty ports, nineteen are
either newly developed or cities rejuvenated
through mining activities or extracting and

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 1976 CHINESE CITIES 407

TABLE 5.-NEWLY DEVELOPED CITIES WITH THE TABLE 6.-NEWLY DEVELOPED CITIES WITH THE
STATUS OF PREFECTURE-LEVEL MUNICIPALITY STATUS OF HSIEN-LEVEL MUNICIPALITY

City Location Major function City Location Major function

Shihtsuishan Inner Mongolia coal mine Ich'un Heilungkiang lumber industry

Karamai Sinkiang oil field Ch'it'aiho Heilungkiang coal mine
Shuahgyashan Heilungkiang coal mine Hungchiang Kirin coal mine
Hokang Heilungkiang coal mine Chiaotso Honan coal mine
Chihsi Heilungkiang coal mine Sanmenhsia Honan hydroelectricity
Anta Heilungkiang oil field Erhlien Inner Mongolia railroad terminal
P'ingtingshan Honan coal mine Haipowan Inner Mongolia coal mine
Tuk'ou Szechwan iron ore mine Wuta Inner Mongolia coal mine
Maanshan Anhwei iron ore mine, Lengshuichiang Hunan iron ore mine
iron and steel
Sources: See Table 5.
industry

Sources: The names and the status of these cities are derived
from Central Intelligence Agency, Peoples Republic of China
Administrative Atlas, op. cit., footnote 11. The major functions
hsien in the adjacent areas respectively.21
of these cities are derived from maps showing various economic Peking has now more than 17,800 square kilo-
activities contained in Chugoku kokogyo bunpuzu (Atlas of
Mining and Industrial Enterprises in China) (Tokyo: Fuji meters under its jurisdiction, larger than the
Journal, 1974). Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area of Los
Angeles; Shanghai has a municipal territory
of 5,800 square kilometers. After transferring
processing industries, and five have gained their
five hsien from Hopei province to Tientsin mu-
importance as modern transport centers in the
nicipality in 1973, Tientsin's administrative
present century. Nearly all of these municipal-
territory increased from 4,000 to more than
ities are important industrial centers for their
11,000 square kilometers. The enlargement of
respective regions. Except for eleven cities, all
municipal territory was aimed at promoting
the prefecture-level municipalities have a popu-
the integration of developed urban centers and
lation of 100,000 or more. Among these eleven
less developed surrounding rural areas through
exceptional cities, seven are associated with
the flow of technology and capital from the
mining or petroleum industries, three are grow-
urban center. It was also an attempt to make
ing transport centers, and one, Lhasa, is simply
each municipality as self-sufficient as possible
the administrative headquarters for the Tibetan
in terms of water, fuel, construction materials,
Autonomous Region. Only nine of the seventy-
secondary foods such as vegetables and fruits,
eight are truly new cities with no historical
and, in recent years, even the staple food for
antecedent as a county seat or a rural market
the large urban population.22
town; they exemplify the location and func-
The specific reasons for areal expansion of
tion of new cities in contemporary China
each municipality have varied. The northward
(Table 5).
expansion of the municipality of Peking in
The hsien-level municipalities are composed
1958 was done partly to include several large
of administrative centers of prefecture-level
reservoirs within the municipality. The west-
units, which account for seventy-five percent
ward expansion of the municipality of Hang-
of the total 100 municipalities. Seventy-nine
were administrative centers (hsien city or
higher) in the pre-1949 period. Of the twenty- 21 For a detailed account of the evolution and
function of the territorial organizations of the munici-
one cities without any traditional origin, twelve
pality of Peking, see S. D. Chang, "Peking," Encyclo-
were market towns before 1949 and only nine paedia Britannica, Macropaedia, Vol. 14, 1974, pp. 1-
have been newly created settlements in the past 14.
twenty-six years (Table 6). 22 In the past few years, a few large municipalities
have achieved almost complete self-sufficiency in vege-
Another important feature of Chinese mu-
table and food supplies. A. Sugino, "Chugoku ni okeru
nicipalities is the enormous area under their toshi kensetsu kadai" (Topics of Urban Construction
jurisdiction as a result of frequent expansion in China), Aziya kekyu (Asian Studies), Vol. 19
and readjustment of municipal boundaries. (1973) pp. 1-25; W. Shen, "Going in for Farming in
an Industrial City: How Shenyang became Self-Suffl-
Both Peking and Shanghai extended their
cient in Grain and Vegetables," Peking Review, No.
boundaries in 1958 and annexed nine and ten 10 (1971), pp. 8-11.

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 408 SENDOU CHANG September

|PREFECTURAL CITIES I N CHINA: 1974

C2 fm 4 S AC~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~CIC

j k f * V t Y^N~AIAHA CHUt

I _ j~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~UHU<ENHOT
r J * 9 < NY~~~~~UCH NKANGA
L / > l <g~~~~~~~~f5^A~~~tfsHAN WPA~~~~~N CHO"NK UNGTU

I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~OO P -E j I N _N4IN GPOO

s ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~PR FCUA BONARHINGHSANGO

] * P R E F E C T U R A L C I T Y [ g I - ISHAN I E N T S I|

. INDEPENDENT MUNICIPALITY E PINIETAIA

~~ PROVINCIAL BOUNDARY / >~TNGCUA ENGHO

t_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~' I - /_ 0O 40HUANKM

FIC}.3. Pefecure-lvel unicpaliies ad prfectr

gence~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~II Agny epe eulco hn

chou seems to have been intended to incorpo-
rate the Hsinanchiang Hydroelectric station,
the largest in south China. The north-south
elongated shape of the oil rich Karamai munic-
ipality in Sinkiang was most likely designed to
include a medium-sized petroleum refinery
located at Tushantze, a new town about 150
kilometers south of Karamai. Lhasa, the largest
municipality in China in terms of area, extends
in an east-west direction along the great bend
of the Yalutsangpo River (the Brahmaputra),
the most promising area for agricultural devel-
opment and hydroelectricity generation in
Tibet (Fig. 3).
As each municipality includes such an ex-
tensive territory, it contains a significant rural
population within its jurisdiction. In 1953, the
rural population within the municipality of
Peking constituted roughly a quarter of the
total, even though the rural population con-
tained in the 164 municipalities was, on the
average, only about seventeen percent in that
year.23 With the extension of boundaries since
1958, the proportion of rural population within
many municipalities has been increased sub-
stantially. In the municipality of Shanghai, for
example, more than forty-five percent of the
people are residents of the ten hsien which
were incorporated into the municipality in
1958.24
23 Ullman, op. cit., footnote 5.
24 The municipality of Shanghai has a population of
10,820,000, of which about 5.7 million are located in
the urbanized central districts. The remaining 5 mil-
lion or so must be in the surrounding 10 hsien annexed
in 1958. Chung-hua jen-ming kung-ho kuo fen-sheng
ti-tu chi, op. cit., footnote 3, p. 43.

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 1976 CHINESE
The widespread distribution of municipal-
ities throughout the country and the inclusion
of extensive rural areas within them seem to
have all been aimed at minimizing differences
between urban and rural, between industry and
agriculture, and between coastal areas and in-
land regions. The distribution pattern attempts
to integrate urban and rural areas by raising
agricultural productivity through technological
diffusion from the urban center and by sub-
contracting parts of the industrial process from
the city to small, rural, labor-intensive enter-
prises. The inclusion of a large agricultural base
within the municipalities also ensures the sup-
ply of agricultural products within a relatively
short distance and stimulates the growth of
various primary industries within the munici-
palities. The mutual dependence between agri-
culture and industry seems to have accelerated
the development of the rural areas in many
municipalities. In the annexed areas of the
municipality- of Peking, for example, twenty
communities, each with a population of 10,000
or more, had emerged by 1972. Among these
twenty communities, only five serve as hsien
cities; the remainder are production centers
of small and medium-sized enterprises. Com-
munes located within large municipalities ap-
pear to be more prosperous and populous, as
illustrated by the Red Star Sino-Korean
Friendship Commune, located to the south of
the old walled area of Peking. The commune
has more than 10,000 people whose mecha-
nized agriculture has become a show place for
foreign visitors in recent years.25
The population and territory possessed by
an average hsien-level municipality are much
smaller than other types of municipalities.
Seventy-eight out of 100 fall into the popula-
tion group between 50,000 and 300,000, and
constitute an important component of the
medium-sized cities in China. There are eleven
hsien-level municipalities with a population of
less than 50,000. Except for the city of Yenan,
a hsien city in late imperial China and the
base of Communist movement in the period of
25 The population size of various communities within
the municipality of Peking is shown in the map on p.
9 of Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho kuo fen-sheng ti-tu
chi, op. cit., footnote 3. For an account of land use
changes and the spatial organization of various func-
tional areas of the Red Star Sino-Korean Friendship
Commune, see A. Rodgers, "The Red Star Sino-Korean
Friendship Commune," The China Geographer, No. 2
(1975), pp. 1-26.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITiES 409
1934-45, these eleven cities are all newly de-
veloped regional industrial and mining centers.
Seventy-five hsien-level municipalities also
serve as the administrative centers of the pre-
fecture-level units, reflecting the important role
played by administrative cities in the urbaniza-
tion process in contemporary China.
MODERNIZATION AND THE CHANGING
ROLE OF TRADITIONAL CITIES
Modern technology has had relatively little
effect on the system of traditional cities. Below
the level of provincial capitals in the adminis-
trative hierarchy are the prefectural cities and
hsien cities, which have more direct interaction
with the rural areas.26 Prefectures are an in-
termediate level of administration between
provinces and hsien and include several hsien
units under their supervision. The number of
prefectural units in modern Chinese history has
fluctuated from time to time. The present 210
prefecture-level units seem to be a numerical
compromise between 249 fu under the Ch'ing
(1644-1911) and the 190 "Administrative
Supervision Districts" (Hsing-cheng tu-ch'a
ch'u) in the late 1930s.
There has been considerable persistence in
the spatial structure of administrative centers.
One hundred seventy-five out of 210 cities
were administrative cities (hsien cities or
higher) in the pre-1949 period. In fact, 116
out of the 175 were also prefectural (fu or its
equivalent) cities in late imperial China, even
though a number of these cities have changed
their names over the past century. Twenty
market towns (chen), four treaty ports, and
two "municipalities" (shih) of the 1930s are
also listed among present prefectural cities.27
26 The prefectural cities in this study denote all ad-
ministrative centers of prefecture-level units, including
prefectures (ti-ch'u or chuan-ch'u), autonomous pre-
fectures (tzu-chih-chou), autonomous district (hsin-
cheng-ch'u), and league (meng). The hsien cities
represent all administrative cities of hsien-level units,
including hsien, autonomous hsien (tzu-chih-hsien),
banner (ch'i), and autonomous banner (tzu-chih-ch'i).
27 The twenty market towns in the pre-1949 period
are: T'unhsi (Anhwei); Shihyen, Wench'uanchen
(Hupei); Chishou, Ch'ienyang (Hunan); Yunch'eng
(Shansi); Chumatien (Honan); T'angshan, Shihchia-
chuang (Hopei); Ich'un, Chiamussu, Mutanchiang
(Heilungkiang); Wuchung (Ninghsia); Hsifengchen
(Kansu); Tsetang, Jihk'otse (Tibet); K'aili (Kwei-
chow); At'ushih (Sinkiang); Hsiakuan, Luhsi (Yun-
nan). The four treaty ports are: Wuhu (Anhwei);
 410 SEN-DOU CHANG
Only nine prefectural cities are urban settle-
ments newly created in the past twenty-six
years without any historical origin; all nine
cities are administrative seats located either in
the autonomous regions or the autonomous
prefectures where various minority groups con-
stitute important segments of the population.
Prefectural cities are intermediate adminis-
trative centers between provincial authorities
and hsien administration and serve as the first
reservoir in the "trickling down" process of
innovation and technology from large indus-
trial cities and provincial capitals. The intro-
duction of heavy industries and advanced
technology to the provincial hinterland has
typically begun in a few selected prefectural
cities. Three out of four iron and steel plants
in Honan, for example, are located in the three
prefectural cities, Anyang, Hsinyang, and
Hsinhsiang; the other is located in the coal
mining community of Chaotso.28 Among the
thirteen chemical industrial plants in Chekiang,
four are in the capital city of Hangchou, seven
in the four prefectural cities, and only two
are located in hsien cities.29 Out of twelve cot-
ton and woolen textile mills in Sinkiang, three
are located in the capital city of Urumchi,
seven in four prefectural cities throughout the
region, and only two are in newly developed
market towns.30 The prefectural cities also
"take charge of production of hand tractors,
diesel engines, simple machine tools and elec-
tric motors and account for the bulk of farm
machinery produced in the province."'31 The
prefectural cities in China are a convergence
zone of two technological processes, the "trick-
ling down" of the modern sector of the econ-
omy from the top, and the "spilling over" of
Yent'ai (Shantung), Shant'ou, Chanchiang (Kwang-
tung). The two municipalities are Ssup'ing and Tung-
hua (Kirin).
28 Chujoku kogyo kojo soran (A Comprehensive
Compilation of Industrial Factories in China) (Tokyo:
Aziya kenkyusho, 1965), pp. 647-48.
29 Chujoku kogyo kojo soran, op. cit., footnote
pp. 47-72.
30 Chujoku kogyo kojo soran, op. cit., footnote 28,
pp. 286-88.
31 C. Riskin, "Small Industry and the Chinese
Model of Development," China Quarterly, No. 46
(1971), pp. 245-73. For an account of the economic
function and the growth of a medium-sized prefectural
city in Kiangsi province in recent years, see "Chi-an,"
Ti-li chih-shih (Geographical Knowledge), No. 7
(1975), pp. 11-13.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
September
the intermediate technology from hsien and
communes. 32
Immediately below the prefectural cities in
the administrative hierarchy are the hsien cities.
As of early 1975, there were 2,010 hsien and
123 hsien-level administrative units in China,
a total of 2,233 third-order territorial adminis-
trative units. While the hsien units throughout
the country have undergone numerous read-
justments in the past twenty-six years, the
total number has been remarkably stable at
around 2,200.33 The hsien has been the basic
administrative unit for the vast empire of im-
perial China for more than 2,000 years and the
system is well maintained at the present time,
even though its main functions have been mod-
ified drastically since the initiation of the com-
mune system in 1958. The administrative re-
sponsibilities of hsien authority have decreased
as communes and brigades assumed more local
duties. Since the campaign of self-reliance and
self-sufficiency for every level of territorial
units during the Cultural Revolution the hsien
city has been designated as the primary site
of rural industrialization and many of these
cities have been rejuvenated through the in-
fusion of small and medium scale industrial
enterprises.
Industries developed at the hsien level are
aimed at improving local agricultural produc-
tivity and at providing simple consumer goods
for the needs of rural areas. The industrial
activities of a hsien usually comprise three
components. The first is the so-called "five
small industries" which produce the energy, ce-
ment, chemical fertilizer, iron, and simple
machinery for agriculture. The farm machinery
repair and manufacture component produces
simple farm implements and tools and repairs
agricultural implements to sustain a high rate
of utilization. While the five small industries
are operated primarily by the hsien, the repair
32 A generalized distribution of selected industries
in different cities is found in Lu et al., op. cit., footnote
14. 28,
33 The number of hsien-level units since 1950 has
been as follows:
1950 2,204 1953 2,153 1968 2,126
1951 2,182 1955 2,117 1973 2,135
1952 2,152 1956 2,082 1975 2,233
Sources: 1950-56, Hsueh, op. cit., footnote 11.
1968, 1975, Central Intelligence Agency, op.
cit., Table 5.
1973, Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho kuo fen-
sheng ti-t'u chi, op. cit., footnote 3.
 1976 CHINESE
and manufacture network has a three-tier
structure with the smallest and medium-sized
units run by the brigades and communes re-
spectively, and the relatively large and complex
units by the hsien. The third component is
light industry, which processes agricultural
produce and provides the locality with con-
sumer goods. Light industry depends on in-
creased productivity in the agricultural sector
to provide the raw materials, and depends on
the purchasing power of rural people who gen-
erate the demand for such products. Most agri-
cultural processing industries have been devel-
oped at the commune or even brigade level
but the chemical fertilizer plants, machine tool
plants, cement factories, and power plants are
mainly the responsibility of the hsien author-
ity.34 The overwhelming majority of the hsien
cities today were walled cities in imperial times
and the present regime has simply transformed
the old administrative centers into local indus-
trial production centers, thus enhancing and
endowing the traditional urban network with
modern technology.35
The population of an average Chinese hsien
city is rather small, averaging between 5,000
and 20,000, even though every hsien city in
34 For a discussion of the allocation and interrela-
tionship of various industrial activities in rural areas
of China, see the following three articles by J. Sigurd-
son: "Rural Economic Planning," in M. Oksenburg,
ed., China's Development Experience (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1973), pp. 68-79; "Rural
Industry and the Internal Transfer of Technology," in
S. R. Schram, ed., Authority, Participation, and Cul-
tural Change in China (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1973), pp. 199-232; "Rural Industrial-
ization in China: Approaches and Results," World De-
velopment, Vol. 3 (1975), pp. 527-38.
35 In a hsien city, few industrial enterprises have
been located in the old residential area defined by the
former city walls and moats. Instead, most of the
"five small industries," power plants, and agricultural
machine shops are located in the outskirts of the city
along the major modern transport routes. It appears
that the daily commuting pattern of many industrial
workers is centrifugal from the old city area rather
than the centripetal pattern to the CBD characterizing
most cities in the Western world. In other words the
population in the core area of a hsien city is likely
smaller in daytime than in the night. The distribution
of various functional areas of a hsien city and its indus-
trial enterprises and land use patterns are shown in
"Siyang-hsien ch'eng-chen chien-she ching-nien" (Ex-
perience in Town Construction of Siyang County),
Chien chu hsueh pao (Architectural Journal), No. 3
(1975), pp. 6-7.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITIES 411
China is officially classified as urban.36 Of the
940 cities with a population between 10,000
and 50,000 in 1972, only 700 (one-third) are
hsien cities. They are concentrated in the most
developed areas of China such as the North
China plain, the Szechwan basin, the Wei and
Fen valleys in the Loess plateau, and the lower
Yangtze valley (Fig. 4). There are five hsien
cities which have a population of more than
100,000. Except for the city of Shaohsing in
Chekiang, four (Anta, Peip'iao, Chaoyang,
and Hsuanhua) are oil or mining towns in
Manchuria and Hopei province. In the Sinkiang
Uighurs Autonomous Region, except for the oil
city of Karamai, all settlements with a popula-
tion of 10,000 or more are hsien cities. These
administrative cities created in imperial times
in various oases still constitute the basic urban
centers in the great northwestern territory of
China.
Among the 940 settlements with a popula-
tion between 10,000 and 50,000, more than
a quarter are towns without the administrative
status of hsien cities or higher administrative
centers. These settlements are concentrated in
Manchuria and along the southeast coasts;
most of them are relatively new settlements.
Those settlements scattered in Manchuria are
the creations of the present century, especially
of the past four decades, and are largely re-
sponsible for the higher percentage of urban
population in this area than in the country as
a whole.37
36 In the lower-level Chinese cities, the proportion of
agricultural population to the total population of a
city tends to get larger, in general, as the population
size of a city gets smaller. Like the walled cities in
imperial times, a significant portion of the population
in a hsien city is engaged in agricultural activities. In
the relatively small hsien city of Siyang in Shansi, for
example, the segment of population engaged in agri-
cultural activities accounts for about a half of the
total city population, including five agricultural bri-
gades in the outskirts of the city, which supply agri-
cultural products to the city and also participate in the
industrial enterprises nearby. "Siyang-hsien ch'eng-
chen chien-she ching-nien," op. cit., footnote 35.
37The three provinces of the northeast (Liaoning,
Heilungkiang, and Kirin) ranked first, second, third in
the nation in the percentage of urban population in
each province. In 1958, Liaoning had 42.4 percent of
its population in urban centers, Heilungkiang, 35.3 per-
cent, and Kirin, 29.7 percent, followed by Kiangsu,
28.6 percent, Hopei, 26.6 percent, and Inner Mongolia,
21.3 percent. 0. Etsuzo, "Chugoku ni okeru toshi jinko
no chiiki bunpu" (Regional Distribution of Urban
Population in China), Ajia Keizai (Asian Economy),
Vol. 10 (1969), pp. 12-37.
 412 SEN-DOU CHANG September

LOWER LEVEL CITIES IN CHINA: 1972

0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*~~~~~ ABOVE 100,000

AREA O*F INEEDN MUNICIPALIY~sg KM yis

FIG 4.OV Settlment of moeta%000pol ihu h ttso uiiaiy 92

Source: Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho kuc ti-t'u chi, op. cit., footnote 3.

Along the southeast coast there is a con-
tinuous zone of high rural population density,
probably developed since the Ming period
(1368-1644) when extensive areas were re-
claimed and settlements of various sizes were
established. In spite of the sea expeditions
launched in the early fifteenth century, the
Ming dynasty retained its continental territorial
perception. Many new walled settlements along
the coastal area were designated as "garrison
stations" (wei) rather than given the ordinary
status of hsien city. Such a policy and percep-
tion have persisted through a large part of
modern history. Edicts removing settlements
from the coast to inland locations were in ef-
fect at least during the period from 1662 to
1682, and many sizable settlements thereafter
were not given proper administrative status.38
It is of little wonder, therefore, that many
market towns along the southeast coasts often
have a population larger than hsien cities in
the inland provinces of the northwest and
southwest. A number of these settlements have
become hsien cities and others have become
the sites of commune headquarters in the past
two decades. Since approximately five percent
of the total population of an average hsien is
engaged in local nonagricultural employment,
of which the hsien city has usually the largest
share, the spatial pattern of hsien cities reflects
38 K. C. Hsieh, "Removal of Coastal Population in
Early Tsing Period," Chinese Social and Political
Science Review, Vol. 15 (1932), pp. 559-96.

This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 1976 CHINESE
the distribution of the rural population in
China today.39
CONCLUSION AND PROSPECT
The dual system of cities, which has char-
acterized the urbanization process in many de-
veloping countries of the post colonial era, is
also discernible in the People's Republic of
China.40 While many large industrial cities such
as Anshan, Fushun, Luta, T'angshan, and
Maanshan have grown rapidly with growing
economic efficiency and with a better func-
tional articulation between them, the much
larger urban network which spread throughout
the country is still based on a hierarchical
system of administrative centers. There also are
significant differences between the dual sys-
tem of cities in contemporary China and that
of many other developing countries.
The first difference is that while there is little trative hierarchy. It is an enormous undertak-
articulation and integration between the two
systems of urban development in most devel-
oping nations, the two systems of cities in
China are linked both physically and function-
ally. China's dual system is less conspicuous,
more integrated, and expresses a greater degree
of overlap especially with the higher levels
of administrative centers in the hierarchy.
Technological diffusion and economic develop-
ment have trickled down through various levels
of the administrative hierarchy, formulating a
pattern of hierarchical diffusion. Industrial
achievements of the first fifteen years of the
People's Republic were in the supraprovincial
level centers such as Shenyang and Anshan for
Manchuria, Tientsin, T'angshan, and Paot'ou
39 Industrial employment in rural areas is seasonally in the first fifteen years of urbanization in the
adjusted and may vary considerably to accommodate
the changes in demand for agricultural manpower;
some enterprises may even be closed during the busy
harvest seasons. All available information indicates,
however, that the number of workers used by indus-
tries at county, commune, and brigade levels should
not exceed five percent of the labor force in a county,
and this may be the upper limit today. Sigurdson,
"Rural Industrialization in China: Approaches and
Results," op. cit., footnote 34.
40 For a discussion of the implication of the dual
system of cities in the development process, see T. G.
McGee, "Dualism in the Asian City-the Implication
for City and Regional Planning," in the Third Inter-
national Symposium on Regional Development (To-
kyo: Japan Center for Area Development Research,
1970), pp. 34-77; N. Ginsburg, "From Colonialism
to National Development: Geographical Perspectives
on Patterns and Policies," Annals, Association of
American Geographers, Vol. 63 (1973), pp. 1-21.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITIES 413
for North China, Wuhan for Central China
and Chunking for Southwest China. This was
true especially after the organization in 1958
of seven "economic cooperative regions" and
the establishment of an iron and steel center
in each region. Since the middle 1960s, the
trickling down process appears to have reached
the level of provincial capitals and prefectural
cities. As of the first half of the 1970s, the
prefectural cities in most provinces and, to
a lesser extent, a number of hsien cities have
become the meeting grounds of modern and in-
termediate technology. Even though a hsien
city is supposed to have five basic industries
and some processing industries for agricultural
goods, many hsien cities are still dominated by
intermediate technology. The trickling down
process becomes more difficult and bears
higher costs at each lower level in the adminis-
ing to bring modern technology to each of the
more than 2,000 hsien cities. Whether or not
the economic costs of this policy of regional
self-sufficiency can be offset by the gains in
social and political integration is still to be
seen. The trickling down process is still being
used by the central authority as a means of
transforming the so-called "functionally effec-
tive area" to a "political effective area" in the
nation-building process for a vast country.41
The second difference involves the "law of
proportionate effect." In most developed coun-
tries and in many developing nations where
economic efficiency is a prime consideration in
urbanization, growth rates of cities often have
been proportional to their sizes. Such an effect
was also quite evident at the provincial level
People's Republic. Since the Cultural Revolu-
tion, with the propagation of antiurbanism and
the more serious effects of regional self-
reliance and self-sufficiency policies throughout
the country, city growth rates have been modi-
fied or, in many areas, completely reversed.
Although detailed demographic information is
lacking concerning the growth rate of all cities
in China, evidence indicates that large cities
have grown at a smaller rate than the law of
41 Whitney has discussed the historical evolution of
the "functionally effective area" and "politically effec-
tive area" in China. J. B. R. Whitney, China: Ar-ea,
Administration and Nation Building (University of
Chicago, Department of Geography, Research Paper
No. 123, 1970), pp. 53-72.
 414 SEN-DOU CHANG
proportionate effect would imply. Both the
municipalities of Peking and Shanghai, for ex-
ample, have remained relatively stable in pop-
ulation in the past ten years. Several observers
agree that the population of central Shanghai
has changed very little between 5.5 and 6 mil-
lion since 1949, even though it could only be
achieved by rusticating some 100,000 youths
per annum to inland provinces in the past
decade. The stabilization of the urban popula-
tion in Peking may have been attributed partly
to the diminution in the role of the central
ministries and to the reduction in the size of
their staffs since the Cultural Revolution. It
has been reported that some two-thirds of the
pre-Cultural Revolution ministries, commis-
sioners, and other offices under the state council
lost their separate identities through amal-
gamation or elimination, and the number of
cadres in organs of the central government
numbered only 10,000 in 1970 compared with
60,000 before the Cultural Revolution.42 Dur-
ing the period 1953-72, the most rapidly grow-
ing cities in China were those in the population
groups of from 50,000 to 100,000 whose num-
ber increased from 71 to 105, and those in the
100,000 to 500,000 class whose numbers rose
from 77 to 91.43
The third characteristic feature of Chinese
urban development is the relatively uniform
distribution of the small and medium-sized
cities all over the country, especially if the
diversity of the physical environment and the
disparity of resource endowment in different
parts of the country is considered. Such a uni-
form distribution of cities is a result largely of
using traditional urban structure for the de-
velopment process and coincides with an
ideology that makes industry serve agriculture
and urban centers serve rural areas. In contrast
with the dichotomous gap between the urban
sector of the economy and the vast rural areas
in many developing countries, the Chinese
urban policy has aimed to minimize the so-
called "three differences": differences between
urban and rural, between industry and agri-
culture, and between the intelligentsia and
manual laborers. The dispersed pattern of ur-
ban centers parallels the increasingly decentral-
42 A. Donnithorne, "China's Cellular Economy:
Some Economic Trends since the Cultural Revolution,"
China Quarterly, No. 52 (1972), pp. 605-19.
43 Ullman, op. cit., footnote 5; Chung-hua jen-min
kung-ho kuo ti-t'u chi, op. cit., footnote 3.
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
September
ized control of industrial enterprises since the
Cultural Revolution, though the planning pro-
cess for the nation is still very much the task
of the central government. Perhaps the basic
doctrine in the minds of the central planning
authority is that agriculture is the foundation
of the economy and that local problems with
unique local conditions should be solved, as
much as possible, by local ingenuity and the
locally available resources. By establishing
small and medium-sized enterprises in various
localities, the abundant but scattered natural
resources of the country can be utilized more
fully. The development of small scale rural in-
dustries was a major break with the Soviet
model of development and, in certain important
respects, represented the adoption of a modified
version of the Japanese model of development
in its early stages of modernization. Among
the advantages of this type of development
were the small amount of capital required for
construction, the use of some infrastructure and
housing in the traditional administrative cen-
ters, the ability to absorb rural underemploy-
ment, the utilization of indigenous technology,
the educational function of such enterprises,
and the capability of rural industries to spur
the initiative of the mass rural population.44
The mass participation in industrial enterprises
in rural areas seems to foster the perception
that everyone is doing a fair share of hand
work, and that people in positions of authority
are not usurping privileges. By developing small
industrial enterprises in small cities, the Chi-
nese appear to "have tapped a major source
of ego incentive in the context of participatory
management," an important element in the
developmental process which cannot be easily
quantified in analysis.45
Agricultural products constitute the bulk of
raw materials for industry at hsien level, and
most enterprises run by the hsien authorities
are light industries either serving the needs of
agriculture or meeting the demands of local
people for simple consumer goods produced by
44 For an evaluation of small scale industries as a
developmental strategy, see D. M. Ray, "The Future
of the Moist Model of Development," Asian Forum,
Vol. 2 (1970), pp. 123-35; J. Gurley "Rural Develop-
ment in China, 1949-72," World Development, Vol. 3
(1975), pp. 455-72.
45 The quotation is from S. Andors, "Hobbes and
Weber vs. Marx and Mao: the Political Economy of
Decentralization in China," Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars, Vol. 6, No. 3, (1974), pp. 19-34.
 1976 CHINESE
the light industry. The reliance which hsien
authorities could place on light industry's abil-
ity to generate profits presumably stems from
the hsien's control over trade within its bound-
aries. It is in the position of a monopolist, able
to give priority to local goods and keep out
competing products, thus assuring a protected
market for local commodities at profitable
prices. With such monopolist control within a
hsien, the central place function of the hsien
city has been enhanced and the hsien boundary
has closely coincided with the trade boundary
of a hsien. Local administrative boundaries are
apt to assume a greater importance in a cellular
economy controlled by the political administra-
tion than they are in a market economy.46
The light industry sector has played a more
important role in providing investment funds
for the state partly because such industries are
concentrated in small and medium-sized cities.
Light industry earned sufficient profits between
1952 and 1973 to cover three-fourths of total
state investment in industrial capital construc-
tion. The growth rate of light industry has
surpassed that of heavy industry in recent
years.47
The Chinese have chosen development strat-
egies which foster a dual sector economy using
both modern and intermediate technologies in
both the heavy industrial and agrarian sectors.
This policy, known as "walking on two legs,"
has resulted in the appearance of a dual sys-
tem of cities throughout the country. The dual
system of cities in China appears to have
several advantages :48
46The cellular economy centered around adminis-
trative cities of various ranks also may have been
motivated by the military preparation for defense
against foreign invasions. A cellular economy with a
high degree of regional self-sufficiency could better
stand the serious effect of a war than a free market
economy, as generally believed by the Chinese leader-
ship.
47 L. Goodstadt, "China Steps Up Growth Goal,"
Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 88, No. 21 (1975),
pp. 44-45; C. Chou, "Light Industry Develops Apace,"
Peking Review, Vol. 15, No. 41 (1972), pp. 11-13.
48 For an evaluation of the applicability of Chinese
experience to other countries, see S. B. Rifkin, "The
This content downloaded from 137.30.242.61 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 03:50:47 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CITIES 415
1 ) support of the expansion of the modern
industrial sector by allowing traditional
technologies to handle the less complex,
more labor intensive aspects of these
enterprises;
2) expansion of the agrarian sector with
the aid of local industrialization in small
cities to relieve agricultural bottlenecks
in the developmental process;
3) alleviation of the employment problem
by the absorption of surplus labor into
small scale, labor intensive enterprises
at the levels of communes and hsien;
4) contributions to both increased produc-
tion and national morale by the large
unskilled or semiskilled segments of the
population in the rural areas.
In this way, the dual system of cities links
agriculture with industry, modem technology to
traditional technology, and China's 800 mil-
lion to the goals of its socialist leadership. In
doing so, Chinese cities will grow at a relatively
slow rate, much slower than might be expected
in a reasonably progressive economy. The
largest cities will likely increase at the slowest
rate, while the most rapid growth rate should
occur in settlements with a population under
50,000 which in many ways have closer ties to
the modernization process in the rural areas.
It is also most likely that China will remain
an agrarian society in the foreseeable future.
To use this fact as a significant gauge in mea-
suring China's position on the developmental
scale could result in serious misinterpretation.
The current understanding of what is "urban"
and its implication in development theories in
the Western world is no longer sufficient, and
a new definition will have to be formulated to
accommodate the developmental process in the
People's Republic and, perhaps, in some other
developing countries with similar ideology and
national goals.
Chinese Model for Science and Technology: Its Rel-
evance for Other Developing Countries," Technolog-
ical Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 7 (1975),
pp. 257-71.