ABSTRACT
This chapter examines regional changes in China's urban population distribution, and the forces behind these changes. It considers the aspatial features of urban change — the degree to which there has been vertical concentration of the growing urban population. Regional economic conditions in the territory of modern China have always varied enormously. The massive uprooting of eastern enterprises and personnel and their despatch to the 'second line' of the interior under the extremely influential san xian or 'three lines' policy of the 1960s and 1970s is a major expression of military strategy in spatial-economic policy. Amongst the designated municipalities, it is the cities with urban cores of over half a million which are customarily noted in the Chinese sources as the vital industrial engines of the revolution. In 1982, the 48 cities in this category contained over 40 per cent of all China's urban population and over 60 per cent of the nation's municipal population.
