With China’s rapid urbanization, more people are flowing into urban areas. According to official data, a total of 93 cities have an urban population of 1 million – four  times the number 40 years ago. As the second and third biggest provinces in terms of GDP, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces, each have 10 cities with more than 1 million people. But compared with Jiangsu, no city in Shandong has 6 million. Guangdong, the province with the largest economy, ranks third with eight cities of 1 million inhabitants each. Seven of them are in the Pearl River Delta, the largest urban area in the world in both size and population, according to the World Bank. There are currently six megacities with an urban population of more than 10 million, 10 large cities with an urban population between 5 and 10 million, and 14 cities with a population between 3 and 5 million. By the end of 2019, China’s urbanization rate was 60%, the Shanghai Daily reports. 

Industrial production in China has returned to pre-Covid-19 levels, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said. In the first quarter, the utilization rate of industrial capacity in the nation reached 77.2%, the highest for the same period since 2013. Industrial output increased 24.5% on a yearly basis in the first quarter, while profits of industrial enterprises jumped 1.79 times on a yearly basis in January and February. In the first quarter, 40 of the 41 major industrial sectors achieved year-on-year growth. 

Central China’s Hubei province, hit hard by the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020, reported first-quarter GDP growth of 58.3% to CNY987.27 billion. The secondary sector expanded 88.9% year-on-year, while the services sector grew by 45.7%. Primary industry, which didn’t grow at all last year, expanded 24.9% in the first quarter of this year. Hubei’s economy contracted by 39.2% in the first quarter of 2020, mostly due to a 76-day strict lockdown that paralyzed local businesses. Almost every sector except mining, natural gas and oil shrank in the first quarter last year. For all of 2020, Hubei’s economy contracted 5% to CNY4.34 trillion. In the first quarter of 2021, Hubei’s retail sales rose 62.7%  to reach CNY478.28 billion, compared with a 44.9% drop in the first quarter of last year. 

The Chinese economy as a whole recorded an 18.3% expansion in the first quarter. The economy is expected to grow by roughly 9% for the whole year, well above the official goal of more than 6%, experts said. China’s auto sales reached almost 6.5 million units in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of more than 75% year-on-year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).