This list contains all cities with one million or more inhabitants. Cities are defined in the political-geographic sense (city proper). The population figures given therefore refer to the city or municipality in the political-administrative sense. In some cases, the population figures refer to capital districts or Metropolises and, in the case of the People's Republic of China, to the urban population of the city in question. In many cases, the city boundaries do not correspond to the settlement structure and the boundaries of metropolitan regions and agglomerations often extend far beyond the administrative city boundaries. In some cases, metropolitan regions and political municipalities cannot be separated, as in the case of metropolitan municipalities or city regions, which exist in some countries. There is no globally standardized definition of what constitutes a city, and municipal divisions differ from country to country.
If only the administrative boundaries of a city were taken into account, Chongqing would be the largest city in the world, with 32 million inhabitants. However, the urban population is significantly smaller at just under 14 million (2020) and is spread across various urban settlements. The city's administrative area is almost as large as Austria and larger than the Czech Republic. It consists mainly of mountains, forest and agricultural areas with a rural settlement structure.
The following table sorts cities according to the population within their administrative boundaries at the last available date. The population figures refer in the most cases to the respective municipality within its political boundaries, excluding politically independent suburbs. For Chinese cities, the urban population (urban settlement) of the respective city is given at prefecture, county or district level, which usually include large rural areas. Cities in bold are national capitals. Cities in italic are the largest city in their respective country.
This list is based on the data from the previous paragraph table. It excludes countries with only one city above one million inhabitants.
The following table has cities that used to be over 1 million people in the past century, but have since declined under the 1 million mark.
The following table lists city administrations by population, including full population inside administrative boundaries for Chinese cities.