The vertical and horizontal expansions of China's city system

Most studies of the size, growth, and distribution of cities have been based on Western economies and have identified economic factors such as scale and agglomeration economies and level of economic development as major determinants of urban growth. It is unclear whether these generalizations are applicable in socialist economies. In this paper, I argue that institutional factors have played key roles in shaping China's city system, which is characterized by declining population concentration across cities and by tremendous vertical (population growth of cities) and horizontal (addition of new cities) expansions. The empirical analysis focuses on describing the size distribution of cities, estimating a multivariate model predicting the population growth of cities, and performing a logistic regression analysis of new and existing cities. The findings underscore the effects of urban and regional development policies, socialist institutions, changes in the urban administrative system, and state and local government interests, and suggest that they as a whole are more important than economic factors in explaining the attributes and changes of China's city system.