Recently, the Statistical Chart of Economic and Social Development: Basic Situation of Population in Megacities and Cities XL in the Seventh National Population Census, provided by the National Bureau of Statistics, was published in this year’s 18th issue of the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee.

According to the chart, Changsha was listed as a “city XL” in terms of urban population.

According to the seventh national population census, there are seven megacities: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Tianjin. They are ranked by the number of urban population.

There are 14 cities XL in total, namely Wuhan, Dongguan, Xi’an, Hangzhou, Foshan, Nanjing, Shenyang, Qingdao, Jinan, Changsha, Harbin, Zhengzhou, Kunming and Dalian. They are ranked by the number of urban population. Among them, Wuhan, the leading one, is only 50,000 people away from the population threshold of being a megacity.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, megacities are cities with a permanent urban population of 10 million or more, while cities XL are cities with a permanent urban population between 5 and 10 million. Urban population in the chart refers to the permanent resident population in the urban area.

The urban area refers to the areas under the jurisdiction of the residents' committees and other areas connected to the actual construction of district and municipal government residences in municipal districts and cities not divided into districts, excluding townships and villages.

According to the 2019 Statistical Yearbook on Urban Construction released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development at the end of 2020, six cities -- Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Tianjin -- met the criteria of megacities in China.

At that time, 10 cities, including Dongguan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Xi’an, Jinan, Shenyang and Qingdao, were considered as cities XL.

Source: en.changsha.gov.cn