The land: a high west and a low east
China is a very large country. In the west there are high plateaus, mountains and deserts. Rain is little and farming is hard. In the east there are low plains and big rivers (the Yangtze, the Yellow River, the Pearl River). Rain is more, soil is fertile and the sea is near for ports.
This is why people crowd in the east. A famous imaginary line, the Hu Line, divides the thin west from the dense east. About 9 in 10 people live on the eastern side, which is less than half of the land.
Rapid urbanisation
Urbanisation means a larger and larger share of people live in towns and cities. In 1980 about 19% of Chinese people lived in cities. By about 2011 it was half, and today it is roughly two-thirds. That is hundreds of millions of people in a few decades.
Why so fast? From 1978 the country opened its economy, new factories needed workers, and farm machines needed fewer hands. Many rural people became migrant workers: they work in a city but are still registered in their village (the hukou system), so they may not get the same schooling or health care. Cities also spread outwards and new towns were built. Fast growth brought problems too: crowded housing, traffic and air pollution.
Coastal concentration
In 1980 the government created special economic zones such as Shenzhen, where foreign firms could set up factories with easy rules. Soon the coast became the country's workshop. Three big regions grew: the Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong), the Yangtze River Delta (Shanghai and nearby cities) and the Bohai coast (Beijing, Tianjin).
Ports, cheap shipping and a big workforce made exporting easy, so more firms came, and then more workers. This is a snowball effect. It made the coast rich, but the inland west stayed poorer. To reduce the gap, the state built high-speed trains, roads and airports inland and encouraged firms to move there.
The changing countryside
As workers left, villages changed. Many young adults moved away, leaving children and old people behind (called "left-behind" families). Some villages shrank and houses stood empty. Small plots were joined into bigger farms so that machines such as tractors and harvesters could be used. Farmers earned more from vegetables, fruit, tourism and online selling.
The state also built roads, schools and internet in villages, a policy often called rural revitalisation. So the countryside is not simply "dying": it is becoming less crowded, more mechanised and more connected to cities.
Try it
In the 3D: in step 6 move the year slider from 1980 to 2023. Predict the city share for 2000 before you stop there, then check the readout.
At home: ask a grown-up if anyone in your family moved from a village to a city. List one good thing and one hard thing about the move. Then compare it with the story of Chinese migrant workers.
Key formulas and definitions
- Urban share (%) = city people / all people × 100
- 1980 ≈ 19% urban; 2011 ≈ 50%; 2023 ≈ 66% (approximate)
- About 9 in 10 people live east of the Hu Line
- Big coastal regions: Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, Bohai coast
Worked examples
1. In a model there are 40 dots. 36 are in the east and 4 in the west. What share is in the east?
36 / 40 × 100 = 90%, which matches "about 9 in 10".
2. If 66% of people live in cities, what share lives in villages?
100 - 66 = 34%.
3. By how many percentage points did the urban share rise from 1980 (19%) to 2023 (66%)?
66 - 19 = 47 percentage points.
4. Give two reasons why coastal deltas became big industrial regions.
Ports for shipping goods cheaply, and special economic zones with easy rules for firms; also a large workforce arriving from the countryside.
5. How do machines on farms lead to people moving to cities?
Machines do the work of many hands, so fewer farm workers are needed. People look for jobs elsewhere, mostly in city factories and services.
Common mistakes
- Saying people live evenly across the country. Most live in the east.
- Confusing a percentage with a number of people. 66% is a share, not a count.
- Thinking the countryside only loses. It also gains machines, roads and new income.
- Calling the Hu Line a real border. It is only an imaginary line used to show the density gap.