Gordon Fuller has a historical piece on the demographic numbers in China.
In just fifteen years, the number of people living in rural areas declined slightly, while the number of those living in the cities increased by 328 million. In 1985, the country's population was distributed as nearly 87 percent rural dwellers and 13 percent urban dwellers. By 2000, the comparative profile stood at 64 percent for rural and 36 percent for urban. Additionally, there is currently a "floating population" of about one hundred million (2003 estimate) who have no permanent status as urban residents but who are urban dwellers for more than half the total year.
and these amazing numbers:
In 2001 (according to the authoritative China City Statistical Yearbook of 2002) there were a total of 662 cities with a population greater than 75,000 and 19,600 towns with populations of 5,000 to 75,000. At that time, there were three cities with more than 5 million residents; together, they had a total population of 22.7 million and a GDP of 924.1 billion. Since 2001, several more cities have surpassed the 5-million-residents level.
China's national census, which concluded at the close of 2000, found that the urban population was 36.8 percent of the total. Since then, the urban count in 2002 was officially pegged at 39.1 percent--another remarkable urban growth spurt for the world's most populous nation.
The whole piece is quite informative.
World andI
