“Asian Review 052″―Chinese Megacities part 1
One of the new Tier 1 cities, Wuhan’s plight
The new type of coronavirus infection (COVID-19) headlines, are making people anxious everyday. Eligible citizen runners for the Tokyo Marathon who have been excited toward the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, must accept the unfortunate result, however, now it is the time when the whole world, including the mainland China, to cooperate to end the epidemic.
Wuhan is located on the vast navel of China, and has seen rise and fall of ethnic groups since the Three Kingdom era. This year, the threat emerged from Wuhan that might shake the world. The hardships of healthcare professionals at the hospitals in Wuhan are immeasurable as we see on the Television. Being learned the plight of those citizens whose economic activity stagnated and the day-to-day anxiety has risen, all we can do is to pray for a better situation.
There are 661 cities in China, of which 303 are said to have more than one million population. Cities are often classified to “Tier 1”, “Tier 2” and others. According to an issue in the April 2018 of the Chinese business magazine CBN Weekly, Tier 1 cities are “the largest cities with the most attractive markets”, and Tier 2 cities are “not as large as Tier 1 cities, but are recognized as attractive cities with large room for development”.
So far, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou have been the Tier 1 cities, but according to the same article in CBN Weekly, in addition to these four cities, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Suzhou, Xian, Tianjin, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Shenyang, Qingdao, Ningbo, Dongguan, and Wuxi have been designated as the “New Tier 1 Cities”. All of them have key industries and have been competing for higher ranks in the urban GDP.
Statistics in China are difficult to analyze due to the fact that data collection methods are not standardized, but it is said that there are six cities with a population of over 10 million and Wuhan ranks 6th with a population of approximately 11 million. For a reference, population of Tokyo Metropolitan is 13.95 million.
For Japan, China is a neighboring country with a great power that we have always been conscious of. However, now that we have witnessed the impact of the infectious disease, such as the sharp decline in inbound passengers to Japan and the stagnant activity of Japanese companies due to supply chain paralysis, it is imperative to know China better. In that sense, though we are in a state of emergency, I would like to overview some of the Chinese megacities.
