TOP 50 MOST POPULATED CITIES
This list ranks the 50 most populated cities in China. It refers to the urban area. Municipalities and prefecture-level cities are not each a “city” in the strictest sense of the term, but instead an administrative unit comprising, typically, both an urban core (a city in the strict sense) and surrounding rural or less-urbanized areas usually many times the size of the central, built-up core. Prefecture-level cities nearly always contain multiple counties, county-level cities, and other such sub-divisions. To distinguish a prefecture-level city from its actual urban area (city in the strict sense), the term “市区” (shìqū; “urban area”) is used. However, even this term often encompasses large suburban regions often greater than 1,000 square miles (3,000 km2), sometimes only the urban core whereas the agglomeration overtake the city limits. Thus, the “urban core” would be roughly comparable to the US term “city limit”, the “shìqū or urban area” would be roughly comparable to “metropolitan area”, and the municipality is a political designation defining regions under control of a municipal government, having no comparable division.
1 上海 24,500,000
2 北京 21,500,000
3 广州 20,800,654
4 重庆 18,384,000
5 成都 17,677,122
6 天津 15,500,000
7 深圳 12,357,938
8 哈尔滨 12,000,000
9 武汉 10,670,000
10 苏州 10,349,090
11 杭州 9,018,000
12 西安 8,627,500
13 沈阳 8,255,921
14 东莞 8,220,937
15 南京 8,216,000
16 佛山 7,197,394
17 济南 7,067,900
18 温州 6,642,592
19 青岛 6,188,100
20 泉州 6,107,475
21 汕头 5,346,708
22 长沙 5,288,800
23 郑州 4,253,627
24 大连 4,087,733
25 昆明 3,583,429
26 无锡 3,542,319
27 厦门 3,531,347
28 长春 3,530,115
29 宁波 3,491,597
30 南宁 3,437,171
31 太原 3,426,522
32 合肥 3,352,076
33 常州 3,290,548
34 唐山 3,187,171
35 中山 3,142,300
36 徐州 3,053,778
37 贵阳 3,037,159
38 乌鲁木齐 3,029,372
39 淄博 2,980,800
40 石家庄 2,861,784
41 福州 2,707,294
42 淮安 2,633,420
43 临沂 2,600,200
44 兰州 2,492,325
45 扬州 2,399,079
46 南昌 2,357,838
47 惠州 2,344,507
48 南通 2,273,326
49 襄阳 2,199,689
50 枣庄 2,125,136