Shanghai as the primate city of China
On March 12, 2014, Lu Ming, the Distinguished Professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was invited to deliver a speech at the 40th session of “Hongru Forum”. In the speech, Professor Lu shared his opinions about urbanization and population agglomeration.
With the expanding of megacities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the government administrators are increasingly worried about the population size. Under such a background, Prof. Lu pointed out that if we want to study the determining factors for the population size of big cities of a country, we need to study that for the primate city (namely the largest city). This is because, according to the Zipf' s law describing the population distribution of one country, the second and subsequently smaller cities should represent a proportion of the largest city. For example, the population of the second largest city will be 1/2 of that of the primate city, and on the analogy of this, the population of the No. N city will be 1/N of that of the primate city. If the population size of the primate city has a regular pattern to follow, the population of other cities would follow the rank-size trend stipulated by Zipf’s law. So, the urban system of a country has been determined.
The fitted line of the relation between the populations of a country and that of its primate city in Asia
Based on the empirical analysis of the economic data of 142 nations, Prof. Lu stated that the most important determining factor for the population size of the primate city is the total population of this country. As in Asia, Shanghai falls in the 95% of the confidence interval of the fitted line of the relation between the population of a country and that of its primate city. This means Shanghai is the primate city of China, and its population size is not "too big" as most people think.
In addition, the rapid urbanization and economic openness will drive people to pour in the primate city. Therefore, Professor Lu pointed out that in such a country with a highly open economy and ever-increasing urbanization as China, the population of Shanghai as China’s primate city, will reach the biggest in the whole world.
However, in the present case that the actual number of people below the theoretical predictions, the inflow of non-household population of Shanghai has emerged slowing trend. Professor Lu pointed out that this kind of slowing down is contrary to the good development of economy and it is resulted from all the regulating and control policies of the government, especially the strict household registration system implemented for a long time. If the local government continues to plan the infrastructure and public service according to the underestimated growth rate of population, but the population still continuously moves into the city, problems of crowdedness and insufficient public service will appear, which will not only lead to loss of economic growth but also different identities among urban residents which is unfavorable to a harmonious society.
Shao Yu, the chief economist of orient Securities, Han Yuxiang, director of East China research department of SUN HUNG KAI PROPERTIES, Jin Xiaozhong, director-general of investment promotion department of Shanghai Comprehensive Industrial Development Zone, and Gao Limin, research fellow of SIFL Institute, made their comments. Also, they discussed such topics as the impact of the Internet on urbanization, globalized human capital administration strategy, land circulation plan design.
“Hongru Forum” is a public seminar jointly launched by Liu Hongru Financial Education Foundation and SIFL Institute, and is held regularly once in two weeks. The seminar pays attention to various issues in China’s finance and macro-economy, and devotes itself to building a platform for cross boundary exchanges among excellent scholars, government and market institutions. Since August 2013, “Hongru Forum” has gained the exclusive support of Chang’An International Trust Co., Ltd.
