 ::Maybe Xining has such a big area that it spills into neighboring Gansu province, so that there's urban area that's part of Xining, but not in Qinghai. Either that or there's a serious typo. I searched Xining population in Google and this link provides a more credible figure of 700,000: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/qinghai/xining/. I assume the figure of 1.1 million would not be for Xining city itself but for the county Xining is in, as 7,671 sq km is a huge area for a city of less than a million. I assume the urban figure would be Xining's population plus any other developments in the county that are considered urban. I could find something more official, but I'll leave that for someone else. 