Do You Know the World’s Largest City? …Hint: You’ll Never Guess

For years Tokyo has been considered the largest city in the world.
But not any more.

Guangzhou, China with neighboring Shenzhen (pictured) is now considered the world’s largest city.

City Population is a website that tracks the largest metropolitan areas. The site includes suburbs and surrounding areas in a city’s measurement of population. It is updated periodically based on better information. A few months ago Guangzhou (formerly Canton – where the language Cantonese is spoken) was counted at more than 30 million, nearly as large as Tokyo. The city nearby Guangzhou, is Shenzhen, which was a fishing village when Reagan was US President. Today Shenzhen has somewhere near 13 million people.

The distinction between Guangzhou and Shenzhen is so blurred today that they are counted as the same metropolitan area – making Guangzhou the largest city in the world with 46,500,000 citizens! (Note that Hong Kong which is only a few miles away has a population of 7 million).

For the next couple of days I will be staying in the Guangzho and Shenzhen, China.