China's city classification system has a new tier named as "super large-sized cities," allowing the government to make improvements on population management and city planning as it sees rapid growth for its urban cities.
The statement from the State Council said that the new tier was added to the classification system to increase China's city tiers from four to five. The city classification system is based on population, where cities with a population of more than 10 million people will be classified under the new "super large-sized cities."
Cities with a population of 5 million up to 10 million are classified under "extra large-sized cities." Cities whose population are between 1 million to 5 million are under "large-sized cities," while "medium-sized cities" are those with a population of 500,000 to 1 million. The last tier, "small-sized cities," covers cities with a population under 500,000.
The statement mentioned that the previous city tier system needed an update as more cities in China are seeing rapid growth and in a crucial development period. It also added that the updated system is a response to China's growing social and economic development.
Wang Xiaolu, National Economic Research Institute director from the China Reform Foundation, noted that requirements for the registration of hukou, the household registration system of China, will be different based on each city.
Wang added that registration requirements for hukou in bigger cities will be more strict compared to smaller ones to avert population issues, and that the requirements will prevent certain problems such as pollution and traffic jams.