China's urban population statistics: A critical evaluation

The paper assesses major problems that have made China's urban population statistics confusing and temporally incomparable: lack of geographically standardized areas; absence of a set of consistent criteria for the enumeration of urban population in censuses; and availability of diverse sources of urban statistics published by different government agencies for different purposes. After identifying seven major sources for China's urban population statistics, the authors focus on serious problems with the urban population data collected, adjusted, and published by the National Bureau of Statistics. The need for frequent post-censal adjustments and questionable procedures used to derive intercensal annual urban population growth rates make these data unsatisfactory. The authors demonstrate that a different method of adjustment produces an urban population time series that is internally more consistent and coherent.