Delineating China’s Metropolitan Areas Using Commuting Flow Data

This paper provides the first delineation of China’s commuting-based metropolitan areas (MAs) using a new source of commuting flow data at fine geographic levels. We show that commutes in China are overwhelmingly short and largely confined by administrative boundaries. Consequently, commuting-based MAs are relatively small, highly correlated with the administrative hierarchy, and rarely cross prefectural boundaries. Compared with alternative definitions of cities, the commuting-based MAs match Zipf’s law better and exhibit substantial size premiums along important dimensions. Our preferred definition provides an approximation of local labor markets in China while balancing practical considerations such as the comparability with the official definition and the availability of statistics