Is prefecture-level city a “city” in China: a critical review

Abstract

The definition and boundaries of cities often determine how research is undertaken due to the areal units used to provide geo-located data and thus affect the research findings. Prefecture-level cities are popular city-equivalent statistical units in China, particularly in studies of inter-city mobility. Most prefecture-level cities in China have been delineated as meso-scale administrative divisions for territorial governance through various approaches of administrative annexation. This study takes a critical look at the city definition in China and summarizes two critical challenges that emerge when prefecture-level cities are adopted as city-equivalent statistical units. The first challenge is that the population and other socioeconomic statistics of different prefecture-level cities are incomparable since a large amount of land administered by such cities is functionally rural. The second challenge is that, because prefecture-level cities cannot represent the real functional areas that are based on a daily labor-shed concept, the estimation of inter-city mobility could be largely erroneous by conflating the real inter-city travel with the de facto intra-metropolitan travel such as daily commuting. While the first challenge has long been addressed by scholars and eventually by the national government of China in 2008, the second challenge remains to be solved. These two challenges demand rigorous attempts to delineate cities in China considering integrated economic and social units. This study sheds light on how delineation of administrative boundaries affects our understanding of city hierarchy and spatial interactions. Its implications are not limited to China but applicable to other countries and regions.