Cities growing in both scale and influence

In the last five years China's cities have grown in size and economic power, driven by the accelerated industrialization process, a National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report said yesterday.

The country had 661 cities in 2006, and 287 were at the prefecture level or above, an increase of 8 from 2002.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the 287 cities jumped from 6.43 trillion yuan in 2002 to 13.23 trillion yuan in 2006, with the annual growth rate of 20.4 percent. The proportion of the country's overall GDP increased from 53.4 percent in 2002 to 63.2 percent in 2006.