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Kaili, 
China
342,989 people lived in Kaili in 2025. It is the 1667th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 302nd largest in China.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Kaili's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Kaili grew
Count 10 people in Kaili in 1975 and the same count gives 33.9 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 311,636 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1995 and 2000.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Kaili through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Kaili in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
China · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 2,082 cities in China in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Shanghai. The ringed dot in colour is Kaili; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Kaili covered 44 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 7.9 km² of it. That is 23 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 4 times its size, and its people are 3.4 times as many.
How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.
Of every 100 people in China
Its share of China
Fewer than 1 in every 1,000 people in China lived in Kaili in 2025 — about 1 in 4,167.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 1663 Kansas City United States344,125
- 1664 Etah India344,002
- 1665 Banda Aceh Indonesia343,382
- 1666 Dongying343,003
- 1667 Kaili342,989
- 1668 Edendale South Africa342,930
- 1669 Tiruvannamalai India342,795
- 1670 Yanshi District342,565
- 1671 Dujiangyan342,467
In China, 2025
- 1632 Xinyang351,064
- 1642 Gaoyou348,058
- 1661 Guankou344,468
- 1666 Dongying343,003
- 1667 Kaili342,989
- 1670 Yanshi District342,565
- 1671 Dujiangyan342,467
- 1673 Qingzhou342,044
- 1675 Neijiang341,371
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Kaili are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Kaili publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries