There is only one criterion for dividing the city level in China, that is, it is divided into "five grades and seven categories" according to the total population of the urban area. The highest level is megacity, that is, cities with a permanent population of more than 10 million in urban areas, and there are currently 7 cities in the country that exceed this standard, basically all of which are municipalities directly under the central government or national central cities.
For most provincial capitals, they are megacities and I-type megacities. Most of the prefecture-level cities are type II large cities or medium-sized cities.
The threshold for large cities is 1 million urban population, which is for developed coastal provinces, with the rapid development of the economy, attracting a lot of floating population, most prefecture-level cities have exceeded this standard. However, for the central and western provinces, there is still a certain degree of difficulty.
Anhui is located in the central and eastern part of China, although Anhui has been actively moving closer to the Yangtze River Delta region in recent years, it will still belong to the central region in essence, and its economic strength cannot be compared with the rest of the provinces in the Yangtze River Delta. However, in recent years, Anhui has developed rapidly, and urban construction has also made great achievements.
Anhui has a total of 16 prefecture-level political districts, no sub-provincial cities, no national central cities, all of which are ordinary prefecture-level cities. According to the Qipu data, Anhui's permanent population is more than 61 million, which is the most populous in the central and western provinces. Another commendable figure is that Anhui's population has increased by 1.52 million in ten years, which is also a remarkable achievement in the central and western regions.
However, Anhui is close to the Yangtze River Delta region, and the siphon effect of these economically developed provinces will be more obvious, how can Anhui retain the population and develop the economy? Only by continuing to increase the level of urbanization and expanding the scale of cities can we attract the transfer of population from rural to urban areas.
To this end, Anhui has proposed the goal of building 1 megacity and 13 large cities. This means that 14 of the 16 prefecture-level cities in the province will have an urban population of more than 1 million, which should be a big challenge for Anhui.
Let's take a look at which cities can be listed and which two cities have failed? How is each city positioned?
1 megacity, undoubtedly Hefei. Hefei is the capital of Anhui, but among the provincial capitals, Hefei's fame is not too big. In recent years, Anhui has also taken pains to make Hefei Bigger and Stronger, and the biggest work is to split Chaohu Lake and incorporate part of it into Hefei.
Coupled with the strong support of Anhui, Hefei has undergone changes in recent years. From 2010 to 2020, in just 10 years, the total population of Hefei reached 9.37 million, approaching the size of tens of millions of people, a net increase of 1.91 million people.
But megacities look not at the total population of the city, but at the population of urban areas. According to the latest urban construction statistical yearbook, Hefei's urban population has reached 4.75 million, which is one step away from the threshold of 5 million.
In the past few years, Xi'an, Wuhan and other places launched a robbery war, and the new population has exceeded 200,000 a year. Hefei is still in a period of rapid development, so there is basically no suspense in building a megacity in the next two or three years.
13 large cities: Wuhu, Fuyang, Suzhou, Bozhou, Lu'an, Anqing, Chuzhou, Bengbu, Huainan, Xuancheng, Ma'anshan, Huaibei, Tongling.
Large cities are actually divided into two grades, of which the urban population of 3-5 million is a type I large city, and the 1 million to 3 million is a type II big city. Therefore, although they are all large cities, the difference is still very large.
Among these 13 cities, the most special is Wuhu City, which is the sub-central city of Anhui, an important central city in the Yangtze River Delta region, and the second largest city in Anhui.
Wuhu's current urban population is close to 2 million, ranking among the top prefecture-level cities in the central and western regions, so Anhui has put forward higher requirements for Wuhu to impact the I-type large cities. If this is a 5-year goal, Wuhu will certainly be difficult to achieve and may take ten years or more.
In addition to Wuhu, the remaining 12 cities will be built into Type II large cities, and Fuyang, Bengbu, Huaibei and Anqing will not have much problem. Tongling, Chuzhou, Lu'an, Bozhou and other places are currently less than 500,000, and further efforts are needed.
The two cities that failed were Huangshan and Chizhou. Huangshan is a tourist-oriented city with a current population of only 340,000. The scale of Chizhou is also not large, the total population of the city is only more than 1.6 million, and the urban population is about 300,000. Based on the current scale and future development prospects of Huangshan and Chizhou, the possibility of building a big city within 15 years is very small, and it is not surprising that it will fail.