Via Matt Hartzell’s blog, an interesting look at China’s economic distribution:

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This map shows only rural incomes. Once again, coastal provinces have above-average incomes while (most) inland provinces are below-average. There are a few exceptions, though. Hubei, in the interior, manages to exceed the average, as do landlocked northeastern provinces Heilongjiang and Jilin. These provinces are considered the “breadbasket” of China, with the highest agricultural production, and their rural incomes reflect that. We can see a great amount of variety in the income levels of the rest of the inland provinces. This time, far western Tibet and Xinjiang are not the lowest; this perhaps is due to the sale of oil rights or the collection of caterpillar fungus to supplement rural incomes.

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This image brings the three maps from the top of this post together for clearer comparative viewing. The map on the top—total income—is the sum of the two maps below—urban, and rural. If it doesn’t look that way, that’s because of variation in the population and urbanization rate between provinces.

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This final map has nothing to do with income. It reflects demographic information solely. The national urbanization rate (that is, the percentage of the population that lives in cities) is 51%. China’s population thus is nearly evenly split between urbanites and rural folk. But, as with income and so many other things, that split is distributed unevenly. In this map, those provinces colored blue exceed the national average for urbanization. Most coastal provinces fall in this category, with some exceptions: Shandong is more rural, while inland Chongqing, Hubei, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, and Jilin are more urban. Tibet is, by far, the least urbanized province, with Guizhou in second place.