New Features of the Urban Ethnic Population Distribution

Based on the conclusions of the previous chapter, there are four main transformations in spatial-temporal distributions of urban ethnic minorities in China. The first is a change in the spatial-aggregation of ethnic minorities in the form of a periphery to core transition as urban minorities increasingly migrated from county-level cities to prefecture-level cities or above. The second is a decline in urban minority populations in the central region as a result of outward economic migration to cities in the east and west. This leads to the third transformed characteristic, which is the rapid growth of ethnic minorities in eastern city agglomerations. Finally, the last transformation is the rise in prominence of provincial capitals as a concentration of urban minorities in western China thanks to the implementation of the Western Development Strategy in 2000.