WITH China’s fast urbanization, more people are flowing into urban areas. According to official data, a total of 93 cities have had their urban population reach one million. The number of such cities increased over four times in 40 years.

As the second and third biggest provinces in terms of GDP ranking, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces each have 10 cities that have over one million urban people. But compared with Jiangsu, no city in Shandong has its population reaching six million.

Guangdong, the largest economic province, ranks third with eight cities home to one million urbanites each. Seven of them are in the Pearl River Delta, the largest urban area in the world in both size and population, according to the World Bank.

Experts say the reason why the number in Guangdong is smaller than those of Jiangsu and Shandong is the economic gap between different regions in the province: The province has two megacities – Guangzhou and Shenzhen – which not only gravitated people from other cities to the two megacities but also attracted huge population from other provinces. The total population of the two metropolises has reached nearly 28 million.

By the end of 2019, China’s urbanization rate has reached 60 percent.

(CGTN)