Each province has a capital and a number of the richer provinces (Guangdong, Sichuan, Zhejiang etc.) have already developed their capitals into modern, world beating cities.

These richer provinces have not generally developed the outlying cities in the province and these T 3 & 4 cities are still very much underdeveloped.

The Chinese central government introduced a ranking system in the 1980s to facilitate the staged rollout of infrastructure and urban development throughout the country. Cities were ranked by tier according to the government’s development priorities. Although the tier system began as a bureaucratic classification, it has now become a proxy for demographic and social segmentation in China.

There is a staggering total of 662 designated cities in China. There are currently 105 cities in China with populations over 1 million and of these only 4 are nominated as T1 cities and 35 cities are designated as T2 cities.