According to official data, there are 4.72 million people in my city in Changzhou. So, Changzhou, as a developed city in China, should actually have 8 or 9 million people?
I lived in 10M+ cities, and can say that Shenzhen definitely have more people than anything close to 10M, and 20M measure sounds more believable. I've been in and out of Shenzhen for a long time, and started coming for longer stays around 2016. I plan to move there permanently this year, if the situation with my employer avail that.
Ma Xinrui, did a headcount with professional demographers few years ago, and their estimate also came close to 20M.
Westerners and Westernized Hong Kong people want to say: Shenzhen's achievements are nothing remarkable, Shenzhen's success is because of more people?
Hong'ers are actually coming to SZ to live and work these days, and some genuinely look up.
As for Westerners, most don't even know of this city's existence. And as for Chinese... I actually hear that "sentiment" more frequently from them.
What's wrong with employing a lot of people? Is factory work a "dirty work?" Nobody else in the world does so well in manufacturing, and Shenzhen keeps rocking even after mass demolitions of 2010-2012.
China owes way, way more to that generation of people that risked everything to come from rural areas to work in factories in the South, than to fat, overentitled bankers and bureaucrats from BJ and Shanghai.
2)Or because of 12.5 million people, Shenzhen's per capita GDP is 29,000 US dollars. If it becomes 25 million people, Shenzhen's GDP is only 14,500 US dollars. Is such a value more acceptable for the Westerners and Westernized Hong Kong talents??
What's wrong if it was so? Everybody gets just so much as labour market makes possible. And moreover, experienced factory workers these day make more than average "service industry" workers.
Shenzhen's official median income was around CNY 9700 a year ago. An experienced general labourer with 5+ year experience can easily get 15000 if he has some technical training. If he knows stuff like how to program CNC machines, ovens, or robots, it'll be quite more than that. At CNY15000, an experienced factory employee salary is actually higher than China's average software developer's salary, not so small at all.
And there are certainly less factory workers these days than people in service industry. Factory workers need to eat and have a living too after all...