List of cities in China
Wikimedia list article
According to the administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China, there are three levels of cities: provincial-level cities (consisting of directly-administered municipalities and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau), prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities. As of January 2024, the PRC has a total of 707 cities: 4 municipalities, 2 SARs, 293 prefecture-level cities (including the 15 sub-provincial cities) and 408 county-level cities (including the 38 sub-prefectural cities and 12 XXPC cities). This list does not include any cities in the disputed Taiwan Province and portions of Fujian Province, which are claimed by the PRC under the One China Policy, as these areas are controlled by the Republic of China (see the List of cities in Taiwan).
Prefecture-level cities nearly always contain multiple counties (县), county-level cities, and other such sub-divisions. Because of this, prefecture-level cities often overlap in area with county-level cities.
Four cities are centrally administered municipalities, which include dense urban areas, suburbs, and large rural areas: Chongqing (32.05 million), Shanghai (24.87 million), Beijing (21.89 million), and Tianjin (13.87 million).
In 2024, there were 105 cities governed by the People's Republic of China with an urban population of over 1 million.
List of cities
Contemporary cities
Types of cities
Renamed cities
Dissolved cities
Tier system
The Chinese central government introduced a ranking system in the 1980s to facilitate the staged rollout of infrastructure and urban development throughout the country. Cities were ranked by tier according to the government's development priorities. The tier system began as a bureaucratic classification, but has since the later 1990s acquired new salience from the perspectives of real estate development, commercial vitality and cosmopolitanness, besides the old notions of population, economic size, and political ranking.
The public source identifies “List of cities in China” as wikimedia list article. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around List, cities and China.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “List of cities in China”, the useful work is to connect “wikimedia list article” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1124670. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “List of cities in China”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow List of cities in China primary sources, List of cities in China archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “List of cities in China”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “List of cities in China” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.