Rural and urban populations of China.

In China, the percentage of urban population rose from 13.26 in 1953 to 20.6 in 1982, indicating progress in industrialization. Because China's definitions of rural and urban have changed over the years, as well as the criteria for instituting cities and towns, the development of China's rural and urban population has been inaccurately portrayed. Furthermore, different places interpret these criteria differently. Thus, problems in statistics of rural and urban populations include different criteria in 1) the number of towns, 2) the number of town inhabitants, and 3) classifying towns. The following guidelines should be used to classify cities and towns as well as urban and rural populations. The features of a city should include being a 1) center of industry, commerce, culture, education, science, transportation, and commodity interflow; 2) place where the nonagricultural population lives in compact communities; and 3) place where the nonagricultural population does not exceed 20%. The city area should not be too large; it should include 1) areas necessary for the present city construction, 2) the living quarters of workers and staff members close to the urban district, 3) the production bases of indispensable nonstaple food near an urban district, and 4) areas economically associated with it. The author defines city size types as: 1) megalopolises have over 1 million inhabitants, 2) large cities have 1/2-1 million, 3) medium-sized cities have 300-500,000, 4) small cities have below 200-300,000. In China, towns and small cities differ only in their size and leadership. To unify the statistical criterion of rural and urban populations, 1) the city and under the jurisdiction of a certain city or town should be calculated 1st to indicate how many inhabitants a certain city or town has, and 2) the city is divided into the neighborhood population (which is urban) and the township population (which is rural).