By the end of 2023, China had an urbanization rate of 66.2% and is expected to reach 75-80% by 2035
The cities are massive and really densely populated. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are about 90 minutes apart by car if memory serves and account for about 35M people. Hong Kong is an hour south of Shenzhen by train and that’s another ~8M.
More than a third of the country by population, especially when that population is in the billions, is still pretty large. Not majority rural obviously, but still a large percentage.
But I was speaking geographically. Isn’t half the country almost completely empty? Or am I confusing something I read somewhere?
Not so. Wikipedia has a decent article but here’s the crux of it:
The cities are massive and really densely populated. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are about 90 minutes apart by car if memory serves and account for about 35M people. Hong Kong is an hour south of Shenzhen by train and that’s another ~8M.
That still means there are about 500 million people living in rural areas of China.
So more rural Chinese than total Americans.
More than a third of the country by population, especially when that population is in the billions, is still pretty large. Not majority rural obviously, but still a large percentage.
But I was speaking geographically. Isn’t half the country almost completely empty? Or am I confusing something I read somewhere?
Yeah Western China is basically empty. It’s very mountainous and the land is not fertile.