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Puning, 
China
3,989,322 people lived in Puning in 2025. It is the 113th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 20th largest in China.
Like every city on this site, Puning is counted as a built-up area seen from above rather than as a city government's territory. Why that changes the number.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Puning grew
Where Puning had 10 people in 1975, it had 52.9 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 4.3 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 1980 and 1985.
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
Puning through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Puning in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
China · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: China and its 2,082 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Shanghai). Puning is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Puning covered 692 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 134 km² of it. That is 34 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 12.3 times its size, and its people are 5.3 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
Of every 1,000 people in China in 2025, 3 lived in Puning, which is 4.0 million people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in China; the coloured squares live in Puning. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 109 Douala Cameroon4,104,516
- 110 Jaipur India4,071,754
- 111 Sana'a Yemen4,018,856
- 112 Taiyuan4,005,816
- 113 Puning3,989,322
- 114 Barcelona Spain3,982,704
- 115 Houston United States3,955,046
- 116 Monterrey Mexico3,938,015
- 117 Tashkent Uzbekistan3,935,793
In China, 2025
- 87 Hefei4,867,000
- 96 Harbin4,376,259
- 106 Wenzhou4,158,195
- 112 Taiyuan4,005,816
- 113 Puning3,989,322
- 122 Ürümqi3,755,144
- 128 Qingdao3,616,657
- 137 Jinan3,472,980
- 138 Changsha3,457,508
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 Puning 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 Puning 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