Chinese cities with more people than Spain

Chongqing, with 31.9 million inhabitants according to the viral post, exceeds Spain's population, and Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shenzhen add another 105.3 million people. The message claims these cities are clean and safe, with no slums comparable to Western ones.

The figure is striking, which is why it spreads. **Chongqing**, with **31.9 million** inhabitants, has more people than Spain as a whole, which stands at around **48 million**. But the figure hides an administrative trick: that municipality covers **82,000 square kilometers**, almost the size of Austria, and much of its population lives in rural areas.

## Six cities totaling 136 million

The figures in the post put **Shanghai** at **24.8 million**, **Beijing** at **21.8**, **Chengdu** at **21.4**, **Guangzhou** at **19.1** and **Shenzhen** at **18.2**. Added to Chongqing, that's **136.2 million** people in six urban centers. For comparison, all of Germany has about **84 million**.

## Safety as the selling point

The text claims these cities are "clean and safe" and have virtually no slums or dangerous areas. It's a generalization that is hard to verify and mixes perception with statistics. China records low rates of violent crime, but that is not the same as an absence of urban inequality.

## What the figure actually measures

Chinese population data distinguish between the administrative municipality and the functional metropolitan area. **Chongqing** is the extreme case: its territory includes rural and mountainous districts. The **31.9 million** figure is correct as an administrative statistic, but it does not describe a continuous urban area of that size.

Be cautious with comparisons: Chinese population figures come from official sources and their methodology is not always comparable to the European one.