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Taiyuan, 
China
4,005,816 people lived in Taiyuan in 2025. It is the 112th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 19th largest in China.
Like every city on this site, Taiyuan 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 Taiyuan grew
Count 10 people in Taiyuan in 1975 and the same count gives 52.8 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 4.0 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 1975 and 1980.
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
Taiyuan through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Taiyuan 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 Taiyuan; 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, Taiyuan covered 345 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 96 km² of it. That is 24 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.3 times its size, and its people are 5.3 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in China
Its share of China
Of every 1,000 people in China in 2025, 3 lived in Taiyuan, 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 Taiyuan. 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
- 108 Guadalajara Mexico4,135,440
- 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
In China, 2025
- 86 Zhengzhou4,878,035
- 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
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Taiyuan 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 Taiyuan 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