CHINA-POPULATION: CHINA'S ONCE IN A DECADE POPULATION CENSUS SHOWS MORE THAN 44.7 PERCENT PREFECTURE-LEVEL CITIES HAD SMALLER POPULATIONS THAN IN 2010
According to the once-a-decade census, which was conducted last year of China's 330-plus prefecture-level cities, 149-or 44.7 percent had smaller populations last year than in 2010. The cities with shrinking populations were scattered across 23 of the 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland, with most of them in northeastern, central and western China. Jiang Quanbao, a demographer in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, said "Migration played a major role in the contractions because the total population has not shrunk yet." Shaanxi province itself saw populations shrink in seven of its 10 major cities.