In 2024, about 943.5 million people lived in urban regions in China and 464.8 million in rural. That year, the country had a total population of approximately 1.41 billion people. As of 2024, China was the second most populous country in the world. Urbanization in China Urbanization refers to the process by which people move from rural to urban areas and how a society adapts to the population shift. It is usually seen as a driving force in economic growth, accompanied by industrialization, modernization and the spread of education. Urbanization levels tend to be higher in industrial countries, whereas the degree of urbanization in developing countries remains relatively low. According to World Bank, a mere 19.4 percent of the Chinese population had been living in urban areas in 1980. Since then, China’s urban population has skyrocketed. By 2024, about 67 percent of the Chinese population lived in urban areas. Regional urbanization rates In the last decades, urbanization has progressed greatly in every region of China. Even in most of the more remote Chinese provinces, the urbanization rate surpassed 50 percent in recent years. However, the most urbanized areas are still to be found in the coastal eastern and southern regions of China. The population of Shanghai, the largest city in China and the world’s seventh largest city ranged at around 24 million people in 2023. China’s urban areas are characterized by a developing middle class. Per capita disposable income of Chinese urban households has more than doubled between 2010 and 2020. The emerging middle class is expected to become a significant driver for the continuing growth of the Chinese economy.

In 2024, approximately 67 percent of the total population in China lived in cities. The urbanization rate has increased steadily in China over the last decades. Degree of urbanization in China Urbanization is generally defined as a process of people migrating from rural to urban areas, during which towns and cities are formed and increase in size. Even though urbanization is not exclusively a modern phenomenon, industrialization and modernization did accelerate its progress. As shown in the statistic at hand, the degree of urbanization of China, the world's second-largest economy, rose from 36 percent in 2000 to around 51 percent in 2011. That year, the urban population surpassed the number of rural residents for the first time in the country's history.The urbanization rate varies greatly in different parts of China. While urbanization is lesser advanced in western or central China, in most coastal regions in eastern China more than two-thirds of the population lives already in cities. Among the ten largest Chinese cities in 2021, six were located in coastal regions in East and South China. Urbanization in international comparison Brazil and Russia, two other BRIC countries, display a much higher degree of urbanization than China. On the other hand, in India, the country with the worlds’ largest population, a mere 36.3 percent of the population lived in urban regions as of 2023. Similar to other parts of the world, the progress of urbanization in China is closely linked to modernization. From 2000 to 2024, the contribution of agriculture to the gross domestic product in China shrank from 14.7 percent to 6.8 percent. Even more evident was the decrease of workforce in agriculture.

Urban population (% of total population) in China was reported at 64.57 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - Urban population (% of total) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

In 2023, the ratio of urban to rural population varied greatly in different provinces of China. While Guangdong province had an urban population of around 95.8 million and a rural population of 31.2 million, Tibet had an urban population of only 1.4 million, but a rural population of around 2.2 million.

Urban population growth (annual %) in China was reported at 1.3741 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - Urban population growth (annual %) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Anhui data was reported at 62.570 % in 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 61.510 % for 2023. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Anhui data is updated yearly, averaging 50.140 % from Dec 2005 (Median) to 2024, with 20 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 62.570 % in 2024 and a record low of 35.460 % in 2005. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Anhui data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under China Premium Database’s Socio-Demographic – Table CN.GA: Population: Urbanization Rate.

China: Percent urban population: The latest value from 2023 is 64.57 percent, an increase from 63.56 percent in 2022. In comparison, the world average is 61.36 percent, based on data from 196 countries. Historically, the average for China from 1960 to 2023 is 32.82 percent. The minimum value, 16.2 percent, was reached in 1960 while the maximum of 64.57 percent was recorded in 2023.

Urban population in China was reported at 923498574 in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - Urban population - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

In 2023, the share of urban population in China increased by one percentage points (+1.57 percent) compared to 2022. While the growth is slowing down, with 64.57 percent, the share is at its peak in the observed period. Notably, the share continuously increased over the last years.The urban population refers to the share of the total population living in urban centers. Each country has their own definition of what constitutes an urban center (based on population size, area, or space between dwellings, among others), therefore international comparisons may be inconsistent.Find more key insights for the share of urban population in countries like South Korea and Mongolia.

CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Guangdong data was reported at 75.910 % in 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 75.420 % for 2023. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Guangdong data is updated yearly, averaging 41.965 % from Dec 1949 (Median) to 2024, with 40 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 75.910 % in 2024 and a record low of 15.640 % in 1975. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Guangdong data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under China Premium Database’s Socio-Demographic – Table CN.GA: Population: Urbanization Rate.

In 2023, the urbanization rate in different provinces of China varied between 89.5 percent in Shanghai municipality and 38.9 percent in Tibet. The national average urbanization rate reached around 66.2 percent in 2023. Urbanization and economic development During China’s rapid economic development, the share of people living in cities increased from only 19.4 percent in 1980 to nearly 64 percent in 2020. Urbanization rates are now coming closer to those in developed countries. However, the degree of urbanization still varies significantly between different regions in China. This correlates generally with the level of economic development across different regions in China. In eastern Chinese regions with high personal income levels and high per capita GDP, more inhabitants are living in cities than in the countryside. Influence of geography Another reason for different urbanization rates lies in the huge geographic differences of regions in China. Basically, those regions with a low population density often also display lower urbanization rates, because their inhabitants live more scattered across the land area. These differences will most probably remain despite further economic progress.

Here we used remote sensing data from multiple sources (time-series of Landsat and Sentinel images) to map the impervious surface area (ISA) at five-year intervals from 1990 to 2015, and then converted the results into a standardized dataset of the built-up area for 433 Chinese cities with 300,000 inhabitants or more, which were listed in the United Nations (UN) World Urbanization Prospects (WUP) database (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). We employed a range of spectral indices to generate the 1990–2015 ISA maps in urban areas based on remotely sensed data acquired from multiple sources. In this process, various types of auxiliary data were used to create the desired products for urban areas through manual segmentation of peri-urban and rural areas together with reference to several freely available products of urban extent derived from ISA data using automated urban–rural segmentation methods. After that, following the well-established rules adopted by the UN, we carried out the conversion to the standardized built-up area products from the 1990–2015 ISA maps in urban areas, which conformed to the definition of urban agglomeration area (UAA). Finally, we implemented data postprocessing to guarantee the spatial accuracy and temporal consistency of the final product.The standardized urban built-up area dataset (SUBAD–China) introduced here is the first product using the same definition of UAA adopted by the WUP database for 433 county and higher-level cities in China. The comparisons made with contemporary data produced by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the World Bank and UN-habitat indicate that our results have a high spatial accuracy and good temporal consistency and thus can be used to characterize the process of urban expansion in China.The SUBAD–China contains 2,598 vector files in shapefile format containing data for all China's cities listed in the WUP database that have different urban sizes and income levels with populations over 300,000. Attached with it, we also provided the distribution of validation points for the 1990–2010 ISA products of these 433 Chinese cities in shapefile format and the confusion matrices between classified data and reference data during different time periods as a Microsoft Excel Open XML Spreadsheet (XLSX) file.Furthermore, The standardized built-up area products for such cities will be consistently updated and refined to ensure the quality of their spatiotemporal coverage and accuracy. The production of this dataset together with the usage of population counts derived from the WUP database will close some of the data gaps in the calculation of SDG11.3.1 and benefit other downstream applications relevant to a combined analysis of the spatial and socio-economic domains in urban areas.

CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Zhejiang data was reported at 75.500 % in 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 74.230 % for 2023. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Zhejiang data is updated yearly, averaging 62.910 % from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2024, with 25 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 75.500 % in 2024 and a record low of 48.700 % in 2000. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Zhejiang data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under China Premium Database’s Socio-Demographic – Table CN.GA: Population: Urbanization Rate.

Population in urban agglomerations of more than 1 million in China was reported at 451017824 in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - Population in urban agglomerations of more than 1 million - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

This statistic shows the twenty countries with the projected largest urban populations worldwide in 2050. Forecasts estimate that the urban population of China will be **** billion people in 2050.

This line chart displays urban population (people) by date using the aggregation sum in China. The data is about countries per year.

Access to electricity, urban (% of urban population) in China was reported at 100 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - Access to electricity, urban - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Guangxi data was reported at 57.390 % in 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 56.780 % for 2023. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Guangxi data is updated yearly, averaging 34.640 % from Dec 1950 (Median) to 2024, with 75 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 78.640 % in 2002 and a record low of 8.430 % in 1950. CN: Population: Usual Residence: Urbanization Rate: Guangxi data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under China Premium Database’s Socio-Demographic – Table CN.GA: Population: Urbanization Rate.

Forecast: Share of Urban Population Using Safely Managed Drinking Water Services in China 2022 - 2026 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

People using at least basic sanitation services, urban (% of urban population) in China was reported at 97.62% in 2022, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - People using at least basic sanitation services, urban (% of urban population) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.