Evolution of China's City-Size Distribution Empirical Evidence from 1949 to 2008

This article studies the evolution of China's city-size distribution, as measured by its nonagricultural population, from 1949 to 2008. The robustness of the findings was checked by means of time-series Gini coefficients, panel unit root tests for Gibrat's law, and analysis of distribution dynamics. Although China's city-size distribution presented different patterns of growth in the short run, it has shown an approximately parallel-growth model in the long run. This indicates that the parallel growth rule of city-size distribution also applies to developing countries, though it might work differently there. In countries with relatively mature and complete urban systems, parallel growth results from similar growth rates in all the cities. In developing countries experiencing rapid urbanization, parallel growth mainly results from the emergence and rise of a large number of new cities, offseting the fast growth rate of large cities. This demonstrates that government policy intended to affect city size may be misleading.