Talk:List of cities in China by population/Archive 2
Data source[edit]
The table featured in this article cites this page as its sole source, however it doesn't agree with the values shown there. Here are the top ten cities compared to illustrate my point:
| City | This article | Cited source |
|---|---|---|
| Shanghai | 26,317,104 | 20,217,748 |
| Beijing | 21,542,000 | 16,704,306 |
| Guangzhou | 14,904,400 | 10,641,408 |
| Shenzhen | 10,358,381 | 10,358,381 |
| Tianjin | 9,583,277 | 9,583,277 |
| Chengdu | 7,112,045 | 7,701,692 |
| Wuhan | 7,541,527 | 7,541,527 |
| Dongguan | 7,271,322 | 7,271,322 |
| Foshan | 6,771,895 | 6,771,895 |
| Chongqing | 6,263,790 | 6,263,790 |
Only about half of these values match the cited source. It also seems odd that this page is citing a German website rather than the official Chinese publication. The latest census was in 2010, but the Chinese government publishes annual estimates every year in section 2-6 of the linked document, which seems like the most authoritative and up-to-date source this page should be using. Altay8 (talk) 20:22, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
It looks like several of these discrepancies occurred as a result of the recent edits by 64.119.20.65. I'm disinclined to revert these edits, however, since it makes sense to use data more recent than 2010. The population numbers in the infoboxes of the respective city articles use the 2018 estimates rather than the 2010 census figures. I think this entire page should be updated to use population estimates from an official Chinese government source rather than the results of a ten-year-old census. Altay8 (talk) 20:13, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
It seems the Chinese publication I linked to actually only has population estimates at the provincial level, not the city level, so it's not a useful source for this article. Unfortunately it looks like the population numbers for the cities on the respective city articles come from various different sources, so it'll probably be necessary to cite several sources here: one for each city. Altay8 (talk) 23:41, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
I think the best solution here may be to provide two columns in the table, one labeled "Latest estimate" and the other labeled "2010 census" since both values may be of interest. We should sort the table by the latest estimate figures by default, since those are likely to be more useful than the decade-old official counts. Altay8 (talk) 16:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
SerVasi, you're looking at the wrong table in the cited source. The numbers you're correcting with are the provincial populations, but this article is a list of the city populations. You can find the correct numbers on the cited page in the bottom table titled Cities. I'll revert your changes back to the correct values. Altay8 (talk) 18:24, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Suzhou[edit]
Suzhou has more than 10 million population, then why this city is not in this list ? it should have been in top 10. Human3015 TALK 04:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
- You're right. The reason it's missing though is that it's not listed on PopulationStat, which is the source being used for the latest population estimates. I sent them an email to notify them and I'll update the article if they fix their site. In the meantime, if you can find a better source we could switch the article over to use that instead. Altay8 (talk) 15:26, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
A better statistic resource come from official[edit]
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China publishes China Urban Construction Statistical Yearbook every year. And the public could found the Excel file on the website (http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/xytj/tjzljsxytjgb/jstjnj/index.html) without pay. This is also published by China Statistic Publishing House with ISBN. We can also found the scanned book in CNKI (https://data.cnki.net/trade/Yearbook/Single/N2020050213?z=Z005) (pay needed). The newest is China Urban Construction Statistical Yearbook 2018 which published in April 2020. Table 2-2 is National Urban Population and Construction Land by City. And the column F is "Urban Population", column G is "Urban Temporary Population", sum of them is the "Population of Urban Area" in the Wikipedia list. Every city in China is recorded in the yearbook. I think it's a good and comprehensive resource. Notice @Sinoam, Xindeho, SerVasi, and Xyklone: I don't know who I can talk with, just remind some of the editors who may be interested in it.--Xiliuheshui · chat 20:11, 12 December 2020 (UTC)