You lost me somewhere in the County-level section... lol! But since you put a map of Chengdu, what I can say is that Dujiangyan, for example, is mostly rural, except for a small "city" part in the west. It's always interesting to see all the rivers that spread all over the Chengdu plain, that all originate from the Dujiangyan irrigation system, built 2300 years ago, and that has made Chengdu such a prosperous area for millennia, like a peaceful paradise far away from the hustle of the east coast. One thing I like about the city is that, even though there have been troubled times when the city was pretty much emptied, you still "feel" those 2000 years of mostly peaceful history.
Another small point about Chongqing: it used to be part of Sichuan, and was separated administratively when they built the 3 gorges project. It's still pretty much Sichuan, though culturally, as a "port" city, very different from Chengdu.
Yeah, I used Dujiangyan as an example because I visited Dujiangyan back in April and went to to see the irrigation system. Very pleasant drive out there from Chengdu. Also drove up to Wenchuan to see the earthquake memorial.
For this sentence【Autonomous Prefectures are very similar to Prefecture-Level Cities, except that they are focused on a specific ethnic minority that has a high concentration in that area.】there are actually 10 Autonomous Prefectures simultaneously dedicated to two ethnic groups, list can be found here https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%AA%E6%B2%BB%E5%B7%9E. There are no Autonomous Prefectures for three or more ethnic groups.
Also for the super nerdy (might be more suitable for Part II?), ever wondered why the five Autonomous regions are named slightly different? The standard composition should be [region]+[ethnic group]+[autonomous region], i.e. 宁夏回族自治区 （Ningxia Hui ethnic group autonomous region）and 广西壮族自治区 (Guangxi Zhuang ethnic group autonomous region). BUT Xizang (Tibet) and Neimenggu (Inner Mongolia) are just 西藏自治区 (Xizang autonomous region) and 内蒙古自治区（Inner Mongolia autonomous region）, that's because the name of the ethic group (藏，蒙) is already embedded in the regional names, so they dropped the ethnic part altogether. 新疆维吾尔自治区 （Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region）left out the word 族 or ethnic group because 族 is usually left out in autonomous regions of ethnic groups with 3 or more characters in their names. the same for 柯尔克孜，哈萨克 etc.
This is great! Love the high-level overview that also dives into the various exceptions/specifics when appropriate. I feel like history books often skimp when explaining geographic/city/census designations when they reveal so much - so this is much appreciated.
One thing I like to do when I hear about some Chinese city with X millions of people is do a quick Wikipedia search, look for its main urban districts and check their populations/densities and then look them up on Google Maps. For districts and counties, Google Maps will show the administrative boundaries and you can eyeball what proportion of the area is urban/built-up and what pct is not. This will then give you a good sense of the urban population and density within that central built-up area.
I looked up Shuyang County in Jiangsu on Google Maps. Its urban population is 650,000 but eyeballing Google Maps, its main built-up area looks (Shucheng and Mengxi "neighborhoods") to be no more than 5% of the land area of the county. That means instead of 840 per km2 county-wide population density, the density in that buit-up area is up to 20x that, or ~16k per km2. This is quite dense and you can see it in the photo you shared.
Sometimes districts are all built-up, but many times even the most built-up districts have lots of rural areas. The administrative boundaries are as you mentioned in the article, quite arbitrary at times. So this is really the only way of getting a good sense of it.
For my own edification, I have been doing it a bit with American cities. For example, Ganzhou's closest U.S. city comp is probably Baltimore (or Shuyang County above!). It's official population (9M) is is one of the more extreme inflation-jobs as its main city area is significantly smaller than Nanchang (6M) in the same province whose city center rivals Chicago.
But US development is so different from China that there are better comps in other Asian or European cities. I think it would be interesting for someone to go through Chinese "cities" and really match them up with their equivalent-sized global cities.
You lost me somewhere in the County-level section... lol! But since you put a map of Chengdu, what I can say is that Dujiangyan, for example, is mostly rural, except for a small "city" part in the west. It's always interesting to see all the rivers that spread all over the Chengdu plain, that all originate from the Dujiangyan irrigation system, built 2300 years ago, and that has made Chengdu such a prosperous area for millennia, like a peaceful paradise far away from the hustle of the east coast. One thing I like about the city is that, even though there have been troubled times when the city was pretty much emptied, you still "feel" those 2000 years of mostly peaceful history.
Another small point about Chongqing: it used to be part of Sichuan, and was separated administratively when they built the 3 gorges project. It's still pretty much Sichuan, though culturally, as a "port" city, very different from Chengdu.
Yeah, I used Dujiangyan as an example because I visited Dujiangyan back in April and went to to see the irrigation system. Very pleasant drive out there from Chengdu. Also drove up to Wenchuan to see the earthquake memorial.
A very small bone to pick:
For this sentence【Autonomous Prefectures are very similar to Prefecture-Level Cities, except that they are focused on a specific ethnic minority that has a high concentration in that area.】there are actually 10 Autonomous Prefectures simultaneously dedicated to two ethnic groups, list can be found here https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%AA%E6%B2%BB%E5%B7%9E. There are no Autonomous Prefectures for three or more ethnic groups.
Also for the super nerdy (might be more suitable for Part II?), ever wondered why the five Autonomous regions are named slightly different? The standard composition should be [region]+[ethnic group]+[autonomous region], i.e. 宁夏回族自治区 （Ningxia Hui ethnic group autonomous region）and 广西壮族自治区 (Guangxi Zhuang ethnic group autonomous region). BUT Xizang (Tibet) and Neimenggu (Inner Mongolia) are just 西藏自治区 (Xizang autonomous region) and 内蒙古自治区（Inner Mongolia autonomous region）, that's because the name of the ethic group (藏，蒙) is already embedded in the regional names, so they dropped the ethnic part altogether. 新疆维吾尔自治区 （Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region）left out the word 族 or ethnic group because 族 is usually left out in autonomous regions of ethnic groups with 3 or more characters in their names. the same for 柯尔克孜，哈萨克 etc.
This is great! Love the high-level overview that also dives into the various exceptions/specifics when appropriate. I feel like history books often skimp when explaining geographic/city/census designations when they reveal so much - so this is much appreciated.
Is a league different from a banner ? I guess wait for part 2!
Coming soon, I promise.
One thing I like to do when I hear about some Chinese city with X millions of people is do a quick Wikipedia search, look for its main urban districts and check their populations/densities and then look them up on Google Maps. For districts and counties, Google Maps will show the administrative boundaries and you can eyeball what proportion of the area is urban/built-up and what pct is not. This will then give you a good sense of the urban population and density within that central built-up area.
I looked up Shuyang County in Jiangsu on Google Maps. Its urban population is 650,000 but eyeballing Google Maps, its main built-up area looks (Shucheng and Mengxi "neighborhoods") to be no more than 5% of the land area of the county. That means instead of 840 per km2 county-wide population density, the density in that buit-up area is up to 20x that, or ~16k per km2. This is quite dense and you can see it in the photo you shared.
Sometimes districts are all built-up, but many times even the most built-up districts have lots of rural areas. The administrative boundaries are as you mentioned in the article, quite arbitrary at times. So this is really the only way of getting a good sense of it.
For my own edification, I have been doing it a bit with American cities. For example, Ganzhou's closest U.S. city comp is probably Baltimore (or Shuyang County above!). It's official population (9M) is is one of the more extreme inflation-jobs as its main city area is significantly smaller than Nanchang (6M) in the same province whose city center rivals Chicago.
But US development is so different from China that there are better comps in other Asian or European cities. I think it would be interesting for someone to go through Chinese "cities" and really match them up with their equivalent-sized global cities.
Very comprehensive👍👍
You are a river to your people, David.