This chapter explains how the imperial urban system expanded into south China. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, fighting in the north caused southern migration, particularly after the An Lushan Rebellion in 755. This led to the growth of commercial cities in the Lower Yangzi Delta, which were linked to the northern capitals via the Grand Canal after the reunification of China under the Sui Dynasty. At the same time, Chinese cities were linked to the medieval international world over land along the Silk Road, and over sea via Guangzhou. In northern capitals, which reflected the influence of the Kaogongji, cities continued to be walled and divided into wards. However, in the Lower Yangzi Delta commercial cities were more open plan. Meanwhile, the arrival of Buddhism and Daoism into China brought monasteries and temples into cities, while monks began to take responsibility for aspects of urban governance along with imperial officials. Wards divided cities socially as well as physically. The wealthy enjoyed lavish lifestyles, built palaces and mansions, donated to monasteries, and constructed gardens. Goods and people from outside China made cities more cosmopolitan, and writers reflected on this and other aspects of urban life in their poetry.

During the nineteenth century the seeds were sown for the emergence of China’s modern urban society. The opening of treaty ports reshaped the urban system. The Grand Canal was replaced as the main link between north and south by new coastal shipping connections, and cities along the coast grew rapidly in size. Foreign powers controlled parts of treaty port cities, and they established municipal councils responsible for many aspects of urban life such as policing, water, gas, electricity, and transport systems. New urban forms first appeared in treaty ports, but then like the new government institutions crossed over into Chinese cities. At the same time, businessmen, merchants, and other groups of urban inhabitants asserted themselves through new institutions like chambers of commerce or through old ones like guilds. Chinese and foreign communities in treaty ports did business together and mingled in some social settings, such as bars or restaurants. However, for the most part the social and cultural lives of these two communities were separate, and misunderstandings were common. Although imperialism brought with it ideas, products, and technologies that were beginning to change urban life, as yet these remained beond the reach of most Chinese.

The chapter describes how the Chinese imperial urban civilization emerged. The urban system developed from a loosely linked collection of cities into an imperial network with the main capital, Chang’an, as the political, economic, and cultural centre. Roads and waterways allowed goods and people to move around the empire, and trading routes to the west linked China to central Asia and beyond. From their origins as small settlements with earthen walls, Chinese cities developed according to prescribed plans that linked imperial power on earth with divine power in heaven. These were set out in the Record of Investigation of Crafts (Kaogongji), an ancient Chinese text. Chinese cities became nodes in an imperial bureaucracy, and although there was no autonomous municipal government, in Chang’an and other capital cities, officials were responsible for urban management. Chinese cities had an urban culture. Kings and emperors lived in their palaces, only emerging to conduct rituals such as sacrifices to ancestors and gods. An imperial administrative elite ran the empire, and merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans traded goods and set up businesses in markets in Chang’an and other cities, which were described in poems that reflected on urban life.

Industrialization was the catalyst for the spread of urban modernity across China in the first half of the twentieth century, although most factories were in large coastal cities and the northeast in Manchuria. The Japanese invasion of 1937 forced the Nationalist government and millions of people to move west, and cities such as Chongqing and Kunming grew substantially. Cities were now connected via rail, road, telegraph, telephone, and air travel, and the urban system was reconfigured along these new communications networks. Chinese cities acquired commercial and industrial districts, new administrative zones, parks, and residential areas, while new building technology and architectural styles transformed urban skylines. Experiments in municipal governance came together in a suite of new laws passed after the Nationalist government came to power in 1927 that sought to impose order and standardization across the country, and urban plans were produced for many cities, although many never made it off the drawing board. No longer was American, European, or Japanese culture confined to coastal treaty ports. Teachers, doctors, engineers, shop girls, bank clerks, and factory workers across the country were all able to purchase global brands, watch films made in Hollywood or Shanghai, and listen to jazz in clubs.

Chinese late imperial urban civilization was made up of loose regional economies with a few large cities supported by lots of market towns. The Grand Canal remained its backbone, and China’s most prosperous cities were distributed along its length, and international maritime connections to the early modern global economy saw the growth of the Pearl River Delta. Elsewhere defence was important. Ming Dynasty coastal cities faced threats from pirates. Then as the Qing Dynasty expanded into the northwest, cities in the new province of Xinjiang developed around military garrisons. Walls remained a primary characteristic of Chinese urban form, and they surrounded large commercial and administrative cities, as well as those built for defensive purposes. All cities were now governed by a mixture of state and private interests, including the newly established merchant societies. The Ming and Qing Dynasties saw the flowering of late imperial urban culture. The cities of the Lower Yangzi Delta set the standards of style and taste, but the movement of gentry, merchants, and other urban residents brought this urban culture to the farthest corners of the empire. They produced travel guides, urban histories, prose, and poetry that recorded all aspects of urban life in minute detail.

This book is an introduction to Chinese urban history from its origins to the present. I have described how cities changed, and I have summarized some of the major debates about why they did so. I have also made several arguments about Chinese urban history myself. Here, I summarize these arguments and then note some of the areas of urban history that I have either not given enough space to or in some cases barely mentioned at all. Finally, I offer some comments on the present and future of Chinese urbanization, and its impact on the rest of the world.

I make three main arguments in this book. The first is that despite being the longest-existing and largest agricultural empire the world has ever seen, China has always had a vibrant urban civilization.

After 1949, the Communist government invested in industrial development, much of it in cities far from the coast, which were now linked to the urban system by rapidly expanding rail and road networks. Industrial development caused rural-to-urban migration, and so the government introduced policies to keep people in the countryside, which meant that there were few really large cities in the Maoist period. Influenced by the USSR, Chinese planners built micro-districts combining work with housing and municipal services. Most were managed by danwei (work units), such as large state-owned companies, where Communist Party cadres organized many aspects of urban life. Urban space was now highly politicized, and this allowed the government to mobilize the people during political campaigns. Communist Party cadres became a new urban elite, and there were divisions between those who worked for large state-owned enterprises, and had access to urban amenities through their danwei, and those who worked in smaller factories or workshops. Meanwhile, people’s class status became important in their daily lives. Those who were from bourgeois backgrounds were targeted in political campaigns, and during the Cultural Revolution many suffered humiliating struggle sessions at the hands of Red Guards.

During the Tang-Song transition, urbanization created regionally distinct hierarchical networks of large and small cities, market towns, and villages, which were closely connected in complex economic, social, and political relationships. The Lower Yangzi Delta was the most urbanized region of China, and remained linked to northern capitals via the Grand Canal. Within Chinese capitals, emperors, aristocrats, and officials remained enclosed within palace and imperial cities. Outside, the ward system broke down, and in many smaller cities there were no walls at all. Now commerce could be found along every street, and it also brought new forms of social organization and governance. Merchants organized different trades into guilds and took their place alongside the state and religious institutions in governing urban life. In capital cities, imperial families continued to assert their symbolic right to rule through participation in now well-established rituals. Elsewhere, people from all social classes were more invested in the urban life of their city, and distinct urban cultures emerged. Local gentry wrote urban histories and guides, bought and sold property, and invested in businesses or religious institutions. They describe lives of urban men and women in levels of detail that do not exist for earlier eras.

This book is a history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despite being an agricultural society for thousands of years, China had a dynamic imperial urban civilization. This consisted of a complex empire-wide urban system linking cities, towns, and villages. Although there was variation across the empire, there was a recognizable Chinese urban form, especially in imperial capitals. At the same time, cities were managed by a mixture of Chinese officials and organizations such as migrant associations. Finally, a vibrant urban culture developed that distinguished cities from the countryside that surrounded them. Then, over the past century, because of a number of historical forces, including industrialization and the emergence of governments committed to urbanization, this urban civilization was transformed into the world’s largest modern urban society. Indeed now, with some of the largest cities and most densely populated and networked cities in the world, China is shaping what it means to be a modern urban society. Like those throughout China’s history, these cities are connected to others around the world, and by highlighting these links, this book writes China into the history of how the world has become a modern urban society.

During the Reform Era, China finally became an urban society. Foreign investment funded factories in coastal cities, which grew rapidly, many new inhabitants migrant labourers from west China. Large cities such as Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai are the centres of megacity regions. These are agglomerations of cities criss-crossed with transport networks and connected to the rest of China by high-speed rail and air. Municipal officials seeking ever higher levels of economic growth have presided over urban expansion. At their best, Chinese cities are innovative, hosting the work of internationally reknowned architects, and incorporating ideas of eco-cities or livable cities. At their worst, they are poorly planned urban sprawl, where the natural environment has been ruined, historical buildings demolished, and communities destroyed. The state has withdrawn from the direct micromanagement of urban life and been replaced by overlapping informal community organizations, but surveillance technologies now give the government more control. Meanwhile, a new entrepreneurial and professional middle class enjoys a new sense of urban sophistication based on property and vehicle ownership, education, consumption of international brands, and foreign travel. However, millions of migrant workers live a precarious urban existence, often far away from their families in the countryside.