china is big Like really big By almost every metric China is one of the largest countries in the world in metrics such as population GDP military size land area It's a huge country And as you might expect for a country so big the cities are massive These are cities with massive urban landscapes Skyscrapers after skyscrapers millions of millions of people All that's true but not always in the way you might think Some of China's biggest cities aren't actually as large as they seem In fact many of them are way less populated than you'd expect And why well it's because in China a city doesn't always mean what you might think it does What the hell am I talking about let's get into it If you've been on Tik Tok or Instagram or literally anywhere you might have seen the city called Chongqing A city that looks like something out of Cyberpunk or Bladeunner Yes this is a real place And you might notice something that is said in almost all of these videos about Chongqing is that it has a population of 32 million people live in this city Population of 32 million people I'm about to get on a flight to supposedly the most populated city in the world 33 million people is enormous and would put Chongqing alongside some of the largest cities in the world including Jakarta Delhi Tokyo and more But if we actually compare the size of these cities and compare it to Chongqing we can see that there is a huge huge difference Here we have Chongqing and we can see that it's about 20 or so miles in terms of height and width But let's take Chongqing and place it right over Tokyo And as you can see Tokyo is many times more massive And if you've ever been to Tokyo you would know Tokyo is extremely dense in parts with entire parts of the city being covered by buildings 10 stories or taller And in comparison when looking at Chongqing from Google Earth we can see many parts of the city are still sparssely populated almost rural This is because Chongqing has mountains that run right through the city And yet despite all this Chongqing somehow has a population of 33 million compared to Tokyo's 37 million So how is this possible well it's not kind of While the urban buildup of Chongqing is not too large Chongqing is technically one of the largest cities in the world And it's not just Chongqing Many of the largest cities in the world by area are in China And this can be seen again on Google Maps when you click on the city of Chongqing You get this absolutely massive area that is 32,000 square miles or about the same size as all of South Carolina or the country of Austria Yes you heard that right A city the size of Austria And it's clear that Chongqing the area is not entirely a city Much of it is rural forest mountainside So what the hell is going on chongqing is special in China It is what is known as a direct administered municipality of which there are four The three others being Shanghai Beijing and Tian Jin These municipalities are at the same level of provinces in China and are directly administered by the central government instead of any particular province So why Chongqing why is it a special municipality well the answer is this was largely done by the government to promote growth in western China back in around 1997 when the city separated from Sichuan province and became its own entity Yet despite being a state of its own this entire giant area is considered part of the city of Chongqing You can kind of compare this to Washington DC which is also not part of any state However DC is tiny only 68 square miles compared to again 32,000 square miles for Chongqing So another way of visualizing what's going on imagine that Indianapolis decided to incorporate the entirety of the state of Indiana Indiana ceases to exist and now this entire area that was once Indiana becomes one city All the little towns that were dotted all across the countryside part of Indianapolis the suburbs of Chicago on the border of Illinois also part of Indianapolis All of Indiana now Indianapolis This is kind of what's going on I know what you're thinking now What the you can see how this definition of a city might get a little confusing right chongqing the city part is absolutely massive but not 33 million people massive This 33 million number also includes millions of rural residents entirely separate cities that are literally hundreds of miles apart including many many cities along the Yangze River which has a lot of people So when you take all this area about the size of Austria that is technically part of Chongqing you get 33 million people But in reality the urban population of the city is only around 8 to 16 million people Still big but not Tokyo big And like I said earlier this is not just Shanqing This is cities across China All over the country there are cities that are entirely way too goddamn big And this can cause these cities to have what seems to be a much higher population than what they actually do have We can look at other areas like Beijing or Changdu which include mountainous areas that are quite obviously not part of the urban city However these are not even the worst offenders Some northern cities like Harbin which is 20,000 square miles or Hulandir which according to Wikipedia has 2.5 million people This seems surprising because if we go on the map the city appears pretty small But this 2.5 million people comes from the fact that Hoola and Beer is over 100,000 square miles in area about the size of Colorado or all of South Korea More than two times over And yes the USA does this too with cities like Anchorage or Jacksonville but not to the same level Jacksonville is the largest city in the continental US and it's only 874 square miles Yet this is only 115th the size of Hulandir And quite frankly most US cities are undersized including cities like LA which only include a portion of the entire metro area So why is this the case why are Chinese cities so damn big because it's not all of them quite frankly Shanghai is reasonably sized and could be argued that Shanghai maybe should be even bigger Well in many countries a city refers to a strictly urbanized area But in China this is not the case Cities in China refer to an administrative region that includes not only the urban core but also countryside surrounding areas and a bunch else This means that a city in China can actually be closer to what other countries call a province or maybe a county Although China also has counties that are usually smaller than the cities which is even more confusing but I'll try to explain all of this To put it plainly there are essentially five different administrative tiers in China These five tiers are province prefecture county township and village I'll explain the first three not so much the last two Let's get into it Starting with the province level these are essentially the US equivalent to state They are directly under the control of the central government and include normal provinces like Guangdong Shandong Jang Soo but also autonomous regions like Tibet and Inner Mongolia and also the aforementioned cities like Chongqing Beijing Shanghai and the other municipalities So although technically Shanghai is a city it has the same administrative level as any Chinese province This is kind of simple right well it won't be for so long So let's move on The next tier is the prefecture level You may have heard of prefectures like in Japan Well they also have them in China Prefecters are essentially subdivisions of provinces But here's where it gets confusing Almost all prefectures in China are classified as cities Specifically they are called prefecture level cities These are administrative regions that contain not just a single urban center but also multiple towns rural areas and in some cases even more cities within them There are just a couple of prefectures in China that are well just prefectures and have no city correlated with them as well as some autonomous prefectures and some areas in inner Mongolia called leagues I'm not going to get into that but almost all prefectures in China are prefectural cities So in China a city at the prefecture level is more like an entire metropolitan region not just the urban core For example Chiang Sha is a prefectural city but the city also includes mountainous areas rural areas in entire other cities like the city of Ningang for example Speaking of the city of Ningang that brings us to the next tier in China the county level This is a subdivision of prefectures of which is already a subdivision of provinces Counties come in three main forms County level cities counties and districts County level cities like Nang are smaller cities that are still governed by a larger prefecture level city like Chiang Shaw Regular counties tend to be more rural and make up much of the farmland or wilderness of larger prefecture level cities For example Chiang Sha County does not include the super urban areas of Chiang Sha but rather the more rural mountainous areas surrounding the main city And then finally we have districts which are fully parts of a prefecture level city and make up its urban core For example Furong District is an urban district that includes some of the densest parts of Chiang Sha And below the county level we also have townships and villages but again I'm not going to get into it But now you can see why Chinese cities are so massive Because in China the definition of a city is completely different from most other countries A city can be as vast as Chongqing functioning almost as an entirely different province It can be a prefecture level city which includes not just a dense urban core but also rural areas and even other cities within it or it can be a county level city which is a smaller city that exists within a larger prefectural level city's jurisdiction With such a broad system the term of city in China can mean anything from a dense metropolis to an entire region Making comparisons with cities in other countries um far more complicated than they first appear This is why it's hard to just say the populations of cities in China are larger than those in the USA because they're completely and utterly different meanings The only real similarities being that they're also called cities So anyways that's it I hope you enjoyed the video Um like subscribe Appreciate it I'll see you guys soon [Music]