IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/chinae/v29y2021i4p35-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban Systems: Understanding and Predicting the Spatial Distribution of China's Population

Author

Listed:
  • Pengfei Li
  • Ming Lu

Abstract

With urbanization and population migration, some Chinese cities fall into decline whereas others prosper. Using nighttime light data, we redefine the city based on economic function and evaluate the city size distribution in representative countries. The results provide evidence not only for Zipf's law, but also for a distortion in China's current city size distribution. This study proposes a feasible method to predict urban population distribution based on the role of geographical factors in regional development, following the idea of spatial equilibrium. This prediction suggests that the divergence of city size in China tends to be pronounced, with inter‐regional income disparity being narrowed and the city size distribution following Zipf's law. The Chinese government should further relax restrictions on population inflow into large cities and prepare for more migration in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Pengfei Li & Ming Lu, 2021. "Urban Systems: Understanding and Predicting the Spatial Distribution of China's Population," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 29(4), pages 35-62, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:29:y:2021:i:4:p:35-62
    DOI: 10.1111/cwe.12380
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12380
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/cwe.12380?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Li Fang & Peng Li & Shunfeng Song, 2017. "China’s development policies and city size distribution: An analysis based on Zipf’s law," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(12), pages 2818-2834, September.
    2. Fujita, Masahisa & Krugman, Paul, 1995. "When is the economy monocentric?: von Thunen and Chamberlin unified," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 505-528, August.
    3. Tom Wilson, 2016. "Evaluation of Alternative Cohort-Component Models for Local Area Population Forecasts," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 35(2), pages 241-261, April.
    4. Jan Eeckhout, 2004. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1429-1451, December.
    5. Anderson, Gordon & Ge, Ying, 2005. "The size distribution of Chinese cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 756-776, November.
    6. Chun-Chung Au & J. Vernon Henderson, 2006. "Are Chinese Cities Too Small?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 549-576.
    7. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    8. Yali Liu & Ming Lu & Kuanhu Xiang, 2018. "Balance through Agglomeration: A Race between Geography and Policy in China's Regional Development," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 26(6), pages 72-96, November.
    9. Hernán D. Rozenfeld & Diego Rybski & Xavier Gabaix & Hernán A. Makse, 2011. "The Area and Population of Cities: New Insights from a Different Perspective on Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2205-2225, August.
    10. Fujita,Masahisa & Thisse,Jacques-François, 2013. "Economics of Agglomeration," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107001411.
    11. Jan Eeckhout, 2009. "Gibrat's Law for (All) Cities: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1676-1683, September.
    12. J. Vernon Henderson & Adam Storeygard & David N. Weil, 2012. "Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 994-1028, April.
    13. Iris Claus & Les Oxley & Ming Lu & Guanghua Wan, 2014. "Urbanization And Urban Systems In The People'S Republic Of China: Research Findings And Policy Recommendations," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 671-685, September.
    14. Rosen, Kenneth T. & Resnick, Mitchel, 1980. "The size distribution of cities: An examination of the Pareto law and primacy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 165-186, September.
    15. Fujita, Masahisa & Mori, Tomoya, 1996. "The role of ports in the making of major cities: Self-agglomeration and hub-effect," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 93-120, April.
    16. Peng, Guohua, 2010. "Zipf’s law for Chinese cities: Rolling sample regressions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(18), pages 3804-3813.
    17. Jiang, Yi, 2020. "Spatial Dynamics and Driving Forces of Asian Cities," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 618, Asian Development Bank.
    18. Arshad, Sidra & Hu, Shougeng & Ashraf, Badar Nadeem, 2018. "Zipf’s law and city size distribution: A survey of the literature and future research agenda," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 492(C), pages 75-92.
    19. Gangopadhyay, Kausik & Basu, B., 2009. "City size distributions for India and China," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(13), pages 2682-2688.
    20. Fujita, Masahisa & Krugman, Paul & Mori, Tomoya, 1999. "On the evolution of hierarchical urban systems1," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 209-251, February.
    21. Su, Hsuan-Li, 2020. "On the city size distribution: A finite mixture interpretation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    22. Xavier Gabaix, 1999. "Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 739-767.
    23. Bee, Marco & Riccaboni, Massimo & Schiavo, Stefano, 2013. "The size distribution of US cities: Not Pareto, even in the tail," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 232-237.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yan Yan & Hui Liu & Ningcheng Wang & Shenjun Yao, 2021. "How Does Low-Density Urbanization Reduce the Financial Sustainability of Chinese Cities? A Debt Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-18, September.
    2. Ning Jia & Huiyong Zhong, 2022. "The Causes and Consequences of China's Municipal Amalgamations: Evidence from Population Redistribution," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 30(4), pages 174-200, July.
    3. Xin Fan & Shan Jin & Zeyu Chen, 2023. "Who Benefits from Domestic Market Integration?," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 2083-2109, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arshad, Sidra & Hu, Shougeng & Ashraf, Badar Nadeem, 2019. "Zipf’s law, the coherence of the urban system and city size distribution: Evidence from Pakistan," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 513(C), pages 87-103.
    2. Zhihong Chen & Shihe Fu & Dayong Zhang, 2013. "Searching for the Parallel Growth of Cities in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(10), pages 2118-2135, August.
    3. Christian Düben & Melanie Krause, 2021. "Population, light, and the size distribution of cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 189-211, January.
    4. Hasan Engin Duran & Andrzej Cieślik, 2021. "The distribution of city sizes in Turkey: A failure of Zipf’s law due to concavity," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(5), pages 1702-1719, October.
    5. Luckstead, Jeff & Devadoss, Stephen, 2014. "A nonparametric analysis of the growth process of Indian cities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 516-519.
    6. Valente J. Matlaba & Mark J. Holmes & Philip McCann & Jacques Poot, 2013. "A Century Of The Evolution Of The Urban System In Brazil," Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 129-151, November.
    7. Stef Proost & Jacques-François Thisse, 2019. "What Can Be Learned from Spatial Economics?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(3), pages 575-643, September.
    8. Bluhm, Richard & Krause, Melanie, 2022. "Top lights: Bright cities and their contribution to economic development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    9. Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2015. "US city size distribution revisited: Theory and empirical evidence," MPRA Paper 64051, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Rafael González-Val, 2019. "US city-size distribution and space," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 283-300, July.
    11. Ho Yeon KIM & Petra de Jong & Jan Rouwendal & Aleid Brouwer, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy [Housing preferences and attribute importance among Dutch older adults: a conjoint choice experiment]," ERSA conference papers ersa12p350, European Regional Science Association.
    12. Gualandi, Stefano & Toscani, Giuseppe, 2019. "Size distribution of cities: A kinetic explanation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 524(C), pages 221-234.
    13. repec:wyi:journl:002175 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Chao Li & John Gibson, 2016. "Pareto's Law and City Size in China: Diverging Patterns in Land and People," Working Papers in Economics 16/09, University of Waikato.
    15. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    16. Mark D. Partridge & Dan S. Rickman & Kamar Ali & M. Rose Olfert, 2008. "Lost in space: population growth in the American hinterlands and small cities," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(6), pages 727-757, November.
    17. Kim, Ho Yeon, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy," IDE Discussion Papers 360, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    18. Sabyasachi Tripathi, 2013. "Do Large Agglomerations Lead To Economic Growth? Evidence From Urban India," Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 176-200, November.
    19. Chen, Zhihong & Fu, Shihe & Zhang, Dayong, 2010. "Searching for the parallel growth of cities," MPRA Paper 21528, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando & González-Val, Rafael, 2013. "A new framework for the US city size distribution: Empirical evidence and theory," MPRA Paper 52190, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Giorgio Fazio & Marco Modica, 2015. "Pareto Or Log-Normal? Best Fit And Truncation In The Distribution Of All Cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(5), pages 736-756, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:29:y:2021:i:4:p:35-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwepacn.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.