Urban growth in China has proceeded in step with the growth and transition of the socialist economy. Year 2000 Census data indicate an urban population of 456 million; this is 36% of the total population and is increasing much more rapidly than the overall population. Several factors drive this rapid urbanization and growth of cities and towns: continuing, although diminishing, population growth; migration of rural people, as regulations on rural and urban household registration change; rapid structural shift in employment activities and the decline of farm employment; foreign trade and foreign investment, especially in coastal areas; restructuring of state-owned enterprises and growth of private enterprises and activities; and allocation of domestic funds in fixed assets for urban infrastructure, also concentrated in coastal areas. Key issues for continuing urbanization focus on the capacity of the emerging private sector in parallel with the state and collective sectors to generate new jobs, and the willingness of the central state to reconcile the subsidies and privileges of state-sector urban employees with other recent migrants in cities and towns who do not enjoy the state-sector subsidies.

"In this paper I seek to review recent work on Chinese urban geography and to appraise the development of China's urban geography as a field of study both inside and outside China. The temporal scope will span scholarship finished and published mainly during the 1980s." The focus is on works published in English. The author examines the primary topics of interest, methodologies and theories, and available sources of data.

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China's industrial output is large and has grown rapidly since 1950. The communist government which took power in 1949 sought to decentralize industry to the interior. Analysis of gross provincial industrial output data based on information statistics indicated a period of increasing industrial concentration from 1952–1957. Thereafter gross industrial output decentralized. Specific industries, however, displayed different spatial patterns. Steel, for example, has become more concentrated, whereas chemical fertilizers and cement showed remarkably dispersed patterns. The patterns reflect a dual structure of industrial production comprised of large, modern, efficient plants and small, less efficient plants producing for local consumption.