Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth ratesubstantially exceeded China's population growth, whichaveraged 1.4 percent annually between 1978 and 2009, andreal GDP per capita accordingly grew at 8.6 percent annuallyduring this period. China's urban population residesprimarily in city districts (shiqu) and town districts(zhenqu), which constitute the urban core of largeradministrative units called cities (shi) and respectivelytowns (zhen). Cities and towns in China are expansiveregions, with administrative territories much larger than inthe rest of the world (Chan 2007). Cities are conceptuallyequivalent to counties in the U.S. and thus the whole ofChina's territory is basically covered by 287prefecture and provincial level municipalities, which withintheir area include 654 city districts - the cities proper inthe conventional sense of this word - and 19,322 towns. Eachtown in turn includes a town district - an urban core thatoccupies a fraction of the town's area but accounts formost of the town's urban population. While cities andtowns as a whole overlap in their administrative boundaries,with multiple towns nested within each city, city districtsand town districts are disjoint structures, being urbanembryos within the administrative boundaries ofterritorially larger cities and towns. The main purpose ofthis study is to examine the development and features oftown districts (zhenqu) - the urbanized core of China's towns.
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