The Administrative Hierarchy and Growth of Urban Scale in China

Chinese cities are characterized with administrative hierarchy. According to administrative hierarchy and government seat, Chinese cities can be divided into seven levels including municipality, vice-provincial city, general provincial capital, general prefecture-level city, county-level city, county town, and general designated town. As the analysis result shows, urban scale and growth is closely related to their administrative hierarchy, and with the upgrading of administrative hierarchy, both the urban population and land scale present a tendency of exponential increase. From the perspective of population and land scale growth, cities with higher administrative hierarchy grow faster than those with lower administrative hierarchy. The differentiation of urban scale and growth is greatly influenced by administration-center bias of governmental resource allocation because cities with different administrative hierarchies make diverse administrative power, resource allocation and institutional arrangement. Under the existing urban system, administration-center bias is also a kind of metropolis bias, and both of them reinforce each other which lead to overexpansion of cities with higher administrative hierarchy and the failure of the policy of urban scale control. To promote the harmonious development of small towns and cities, medium and large cities, we should radically change the administration-center bias in resource allocation, weaken the influence of administrative hierarchy, control the urban scale according to comprehensive carrying capacity and stimulate the development of economy strong town through focusing power expansion to impulse the equality of intercity development and interest equality.