On August 28, the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Promoting High-Quality Development of Urban" was released. This document will become an important guiding document for my country's urban development plan in the future.
The background of the issuance of this document is actually very unusual. In July this year, my country held a central city work conference. This is the fifth time in history that such a conference was held in my country. The first four times were held in 1962, 1963, 1978, and 2015.
Every node held here is a key turning point in my country's urban development and new documents need to be issued for guidance.
The urban work conference held in 2025 is actually a very critical node. The background of this node is that my country's population is beginning to decline, and the population differentiation between cities is becoming more and more serious. In the future, many cities may experience a large population decline.
Faced with these new urban problems, the country needs to build a high-level perspective and guide the scientific development of our cities from top-level design. Against this background, the issuance of the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Promoting High-Quality Development of Urban" is very critical.
In accordance with the relevant requirements of this guiding document, in the future, my country's urban development will bid farewell to extensive growth modes and inertia such as speed, scale, and quantity, and gradually turn to connotation-based development based on quality, efficiency and competitiveness.
After the changes in urban development ideas, my country's urban pattern may also undergo great changes, and many cities may even disappear due to mergers.
This is definitely not groundless. A few days ago, when Gao Guoli, the National Development and Reform Commission’s Urban and Small Town Reform and Development Center, was interviewed by the media. When asked whether cities with lost population and idle land should be merged, Gao Guoli made it clear that the possibility of mergers in the short term is relatively small, but at the same time he also clearly mentioned:
From the perspective of urban development trends, cities such as population loss, capital outflow, and idle land will also face the possibility of mergers or integration in the future. This is an international law and experience. We must respect the law, follow the trend, and take advantage of the situation.
This shows that there is a high possibility that my country's cities will be merged in the future.
As for which cities will be merged, all aspects need to be considered comprehensively. Those cities with severe population outflow and severe land idleness will definitely become priority cities with priority for mergers.
As for which cities will disappear due to mergers in the future, we might as well use the net outflow of population as a reference to make bold speculation.
With the rapid development of urbanization in my country, population movement is becoming more and more frequent, and a large number of people flow from rural areas to cities, from the central and western regions and northeast regions to the eastern regions, resulting in a significant reduction in the population of many provinces and cities.
Let's first compare the population increase and decrease in various provinces in the past 10 years.
In the past 10 years, although my country's population has shown a growth trend overall, in fact, the population in many provinces has gradually declined.
For example, the population of Heilongjiang has decreased by 5.79 million in 10 years, Jilin Province has decreased by 3.25 million in 10 years, Liaoning Province has decreased by 2.03 million in 10 years, and Yunnan has decreased by 1.88 million in 10 years.
In addition, Hunan, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and Tianjin have reduced their permanent population by more than hundreds of thousands compared with 10 years ago.
Of course, these data are only for the permanent population. If we look at the gap between registered population and permanent population, the population loss in many provinces is even more serious.
Let's take the 2024 data as an example. Except for the more permanent population in some developed provinces such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Beijing, and Shanghai, the farther registered population and permanent population in many provinces are more than one million.
For example, Henan's permanent population is 17.51 million less than the registered population, Anhui's permanent population is 9.88 million less than the registered population, Guizhou's permanent population is 7.86 million less than the registered population, Guangxi's permanent population is 7.35 million less than the registered population; Sichuan's permanent population is 6.96 million less than the registered population; Hunan's permanent population is 6.58 million less than the registered population, and Jiangxi's permanent population is 5.15 million less than the registered population.
In addition, the permanent population of Hebei, Hubei, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Chongqing and Jilin are all less than the registered population.
The reason why the permanent population in many provinces is much smaller than the registered population is because a large number of people flow to other provinces.
In the past, registered population far away from home might return to the place of household registration, but at present, except for a few cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen that have not been completely relaxed, household registration in most cities across the country can be settled at will, which means that in the future, household registration will no longer be a hindrance to everyone's mobility, and everyone can settle in other places as they wish.
In this way, the early outflow of people in many provinces is likely to not return to the local area, and there will be more outflows in the future.
In addition to the outflow of population, my country's overall population has been declining in the past two years. In the future, the population of provinces with a relatively large outflow of population will further decline.
Under the background of population decline, the population of many cities will definitely continue to decrease, and this phenomenon has become increasingly obvious in recent years.
According to population data statistics from major cities, among the 295 cities that released the permanent population data for 2024, the population is decreasing, accounting for more than 56%.
The population of Qiqihar, Heze and Bijie has decreased by more than 100,000 in one year.
In addition, cities including Suihua, Zunyi, Xingtai, Hengyang, Shaoyang, Yongzhou, Tai'an, Huaihua, Liaocheng, Qujing, Zhumadian, Dezhou, Jining, Tongren, Zhaotong and other cities have reduced their populations by more than 50,000 in a year.
There are also a large number of cities with a population of between 1 million and 3 million. The number of people in a year has decreased by more than tens of thousands.
According to this trend, the population of many cities may fall below the 2 million or even 1 million mark in the future, and more and more mini-cities will appear.
Under this background, these populations are decreasing year by year, and cities with relatively small absolute populations may be merged.
Don't think that the merger of cities is far away. It is likely to become a common phenomenon in the future, just like many places have begun to merge villages and towns.
In the past 10 years, with the gradual decrease in the population of some cities and the emergence of large amounts of idle land, many places have begun to merge villages and towns, the most typical of which is the merger of villages and towns.
In addition, in the past two years, many places have begun to streamline institutions for counties with relatively small populations. For example, after 2020, Shanxi has promoted the institutional reforms in six small counties including Hequ County, Xinzhou City, Fushan County, Linfen City, Loufan County, Taiyuan City, Shilou County, Luliang City, Yushe County, Jinzhong City, and Licheng County, Changzhi City in two batches.
I believe that this kind of institutional reform may be just the beginning, which is likely to prepare for a large merger in the future. When the time is ripe, those small counties will be merged, or even prefecture-level cities with relatively small populations may be merged.
Doing this not only improves the government's management efficiency, but most importantly, it can reduce administrative expenses costs.
Of course this is just a prediction of ours. As for which cities will be merged in the future, we will have to wait until the actual plan comes out. But one thing is certain that in the context of the overall population continues to decline, future urban mergers will definitely be inevitable.
