Beijing: City or Municipality?

Ask anyone about the size of Beijing and you’ll get several different responses.  Do you mean the city, the metro area, or the municipality?  The common misconception in the west is that the municipality and the city are the same thing.  I remember, back before I moved here, my father telling me about some speaking he saw at some conference.  The dude said Beijing was a city of 20 million surrounded by seven ring roads.  This dude’s assessment wasn’t entirely correct, but it says a great deal about American perceptions of China and Chinese cities in general. 

Trying to apply the standard state/province model of political geography to China doesn’t work.  China consists of provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, and special administrative regions.  Beijing falls under the municipality category, being controlled directly by the central government.  Beijing municipality is roughly the size of the state of Connecticut and has a population of around 20 to 21 million people.  But don’t confuse this with an urbanized population of 21 million.  There are parts of the municipality that are as devoid of human life as Wyoming.  Take Line 1 of the Beijing metro to its western terminus and you wind up in the mountains.  Much of the land is still farmland, and looking at a map of the region will show you that Beijing city is only a small portion of the overall area. 

While the urban core of the city makes up the vast majority of the municipality’s population, it can be deceiving at first glance.  Many Chinese likewise find the structure of American cities to be hard to follow.  As a city grows in China, the central government can simply add the surrounding area to the city without much trouble.  US federalism prevents this.  It is very difficult to explain to my Chinese colleagues that I grew up on the Indiana side of Louisville, KY. 

Coworker: “If you grew up so close to Louisville, why isn’t your area part of the city?” 

The concept of city-county merger is also very difficult to explain. 

Coworker: “Why are some cities and counties merged and others are not?” 

Me: “Because the people have to vote for it.”

Coworker: “So many of the people in the suburbs work in the core of the city, use its services, but don’t have to pay taxes there?” 

Some great arguments exist on either side.  While city-county mergers go a long way to combat the problems of shrinking tax bases resulting from middle-class flight, they also can skew crime rate and poverty statistics, making cities look safer and wealthier than they really are.  Despite their success at reversing the declining fortunes of some rustbelt cities, most notably Indianapolis, mergers are by no means a panacea.    

The whole experience has made me realize how rigid the US system is compared to other nations.  Even in the United Kingdom, the boundaries of counties’ can be adjusted to account for population growth.  For an interesting read, check out the 1965 Act that created present-day metro London in England. 

In short, there is no standard way to measure the size of a city.  The city of Chicago might only have 2.6 million people, but its metro area is much larger than that (somewhere in the neighborhood of 9.7 million people).  I know many residents of Hammond, Aurora, and Naperville that say they’re from Chicago for a number of geographic, political, and professional reasons.  However, many of these same people would fight annexation by the city tooth and nail.  It sort of embodies the American dream of “choosing” your identity.