Ningbo's attractiveness to people remained strong in 2022 despite factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, low fertility rate, as well as a diminishing migrant workforce.

The city in East China's Zhejiang province had a permanent population of 9.62 million as of the end of last year, 74,000 more than the previous year, according to a communiqué released by the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics on Feb 22.

Its population inflow in the past year exceeded the combined figure of Guizhou, Sichuan and Fujian provinces, and is second only to two cities - Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and Hefei in Anhui province - in the Yangtze River Delta, a region encompassing the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui as well as Shanghai municipality.

Ningbo is the sixth most populous city in the delta region, following Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wenzhou and Hefei, with the top three cities now in the "10-million-population" club.

Zhejiang's permanent resident population rose by 370,000 last year, which means one out of every five new permanent residents in the province was in Ningbo.

Ningbo, which is home to over 1.3 million market entities, is famed for its highly developed service and manufacturing sector. The city was ranked sixth in the nation in terms of per capita disposable income in 2022.